r 


LIBRARY} 

'ERSITYOF 
LlrORNIA 
lAN  DIEGO         J 


ENGLISH  £MEN  OF 

TENNYSON 


ENGLISH   £MEN  OF 


TENNYSON 


BY 


SIR    ALFRED    LYALL,    K.C.B. 


LONDON:    MACMILLAN    fcf    CO.,    LIMITED 
NINETEEN     HUNDRED     AND     TWO 


Copyright  in  the  United  States  of  America,  1902 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER    I 
BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBKIDGE  .  1 

CHAPTER    II 
POEMS,  1830-1842 .13 

CHAPTER    III 
THE  PRINCESS  ;  IN  MEMOBIAM 52 

CHAPTER    IV 
MAUD  ;  IDYLLS  OP  THE  KING  ;  ENOCH  ARDBN         .        .        83 

CHAPTER    V 

PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY     .        .        .        .118 

CHAPTER    VI 
THE  PLAYS 154 

CHAPTER   VII 
THE  LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  :  CONCLUSION       .      171 


Page  20,  line  7  of  quotation  from  the  version  of  1832, 
for  'ship'  read  'strip.' 


TENNYSON 

CHAPTER   I 

BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE 

THAT  the  imaginative  literature  of  a  period  preserves 
and  represents  the  ideas,  feelings,  and  manners  of  the 
generation  to  which  it  belongs,  is  sufficiently  manifest. 
And  Taine,  in  his  exposition  of  the  theory  upon  which 
he  wrote  his  History  of  English  Literature,  affirms  that 
any  considerable  literary  work  will  exhibit,  under  care- 
ful analysis,  not  only  the  writer's  state  of  mind,  his 
experiences  and  way  of  life,  but  also  the  long-descended 
influences  of  race  and  tradition,  the  temper  of  his  time, 
and  the  general  intellectual  condition  of  his  nation. 
The  choice  of  words  (he  says),  the  style,  the  metaphors 
used,  the  accent  and  rhythm  of  verses,  the  logical 
order  of  his  reasoning,  are  all  outward  forms  and  signs 
of  these  complex  impressions,  and  so  of  the  environ- 
ment that  has  moulded  them.  Literature,  in  short, 
may  be  employed  by  the  critic  and  the  historian  as 
a  delicate  instrument  for  analysis,  for  investigating 
the  psychology  of  the  man  and  of  his  period,  for  laying 
bare  the  springs  of  thought  and  action  which  underlie 
and  explain  history.  And  poetry  is  the  most  intense 
expression  of  the  dominant  emotions  and  the  higher 
ideals  of  the  age. 

Whether  Taine  did  not  press  his  theory  too  far 
A 


2  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

is  a  question  that  has  been  often  debated ;  and  at  any 
rate  the  proper  use  of  it  demands  a  master-hand. 
Certain  it  is  that  each  age  has  its  peculiar  spirit,  its 
own  outlook  on  the  world ;  and  that  a  great  poet,  or 
group  of  poets,  absorb  the  new  ideas  growing  up 
around  them,  and  have  the  gift  of  inventing  their 
appropriate  fashion  or  setting.  They  are  usually  fol- 
lowed by  a  host  of  imitators  ;  but  when  the  work  has 
been  once  well  done,  the  highest  imitative  skill  will 
not  make  it  really  worth  doing  again  in  the  same 
manner ;  we  must  wait  until  the  changing  world  closes 
one  period  and  opens  a  fresh  one.  This  point  of  view 
may  perhaps  be  accepted  in  studying  the  life  and  works 
of  one  who  has  been  the  chief  poet  of  our  own  time. 
It  is  true  that  the  increasing  variety  and  diffusion 
of  literature  during  the  nineteenth  century  interfere 
with  the  method  of  taking  one  writer,  however 
eminent,  as  the  intellectual  representative  of  his 
society,  and  also  that  we  do  not  yet  stand  at  a 
sufficient  distance  from  a  contemporary  poet  to  be  able 
to  measure  accurately  his  position.  Nevertheless, 
Tennyson's  popularity  grew  so  steadily  and  spread  so 
widely  for  nearly  sixty  years,  and  his  influence  over 
his  generation  has  been  so  remarkable,  that  his  finest 
poetry  may  undoubtedly  be  treated  as  an  illustrative 
record  of  the  prevailing  spirit,  of  the  temperament,  and 
to  some  degree  of  the  national  character  of  his  period. 
It  is  in  Tennyson's  poetry,  moreover,  that  we  must 
look  for  the  chronicle  of  his  life.  That  no  biographer 
could  so  truly  give  him  as  he  gives  himself  in  his  own 
works,  are  almost  the  first  words  of  the  preface  to  the 
admirable  Memoir  written  of  his  father  by  the  present 
Lord  Tennyson.  So  thoroughly,  indeed,  and  so 


I.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  3 

recently,  has  this  biography  been  written,  with  such 
complete  and  exclusive  command  of  all  available 
materials,  that  in  regard  to  the  course  and  incidents 
of  the  poet's  life  it  leaves  almost  nothing  to  be 
discovered  or  added ;  and  every  subsequent  narrative 
must  draw  upon  this  source  of  information.  Nearly 
all  the  private  or  personal  facts  and  incidents  connected 
with  Tennyson  or  with  his  family  have,  therefore,  been 
necessarily  taken  directly  from  the  Memoir.1 

.Alfred  Tennyson  descended  from  a  family  that  had 
been  settled  for  some  centuries  in  the  north-east  of 
England,  at  first  in  Holderness,  beyond  the  Humber, 
and  latterly  in  Lincolnshire.  His  father,  Dr.  George 
Clayton  Tennyson,  was  Rector  of  Somersby  near 
Horncastle,  and  of  other  small  parishes.  Mr.  Howitt, 
writing  in  1847,  says  of  the  Rector  that  he  was  a  man 
of  very  various  talents,  something  of  a  poet,  a  painter, 
an  architect,  and  a  musician.  The  poet's  mother  was 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  the  Reverend  Stephen  Fytche. 
At  Somersby  he  was  born  on  the  6th  August  1809; 
and  when  he  was  seven  years  old  he  was  sent  to  school 
at  the  neighbouring  town  of  Louth.  In  those  days, 
and  long  afterward,  boys  made  their  first,  often  their 
hardest,  experience  of  a  rough  world  at  a  very  tender 
age,  for  in  these  country  schools  the  discipline  was 
harsh  and  the  manners  rude ;  so  that  a  child  lived 
between  fear  of  the  master's  rod  and  the  bullying  of 
his  big  schoolmates,  and  probably  learnt  little  more 
than  the  habit  of  endurance.  Professor  Hales  has 
left  a  record 2  of  his  experiences  at  this  school,  which 

1  The  writer  of  this  volume  has  made  some  occasional  use  of 
an  article  that  he  contributed  on  Tennyson  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review.  2  Appendix  to  vol.  i.  of  the  Memoir. 


4  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

shows  that  the  masters  had  a  way  of  hitting  the  boys 
wantonly,  an  unconscious  propensity  to  find  amuse- 
ment in  giving  pain  that  often  becomes  habitual.  But 
Tennyson's  school  experiences,  though  early,  were 
fortunately  short,  for  after  two  years  he  was  removed 
from  Louth,  and  it  appears  that  for  the  next  ten  years 
he  was  taught  at  home  by  his  father,  whose  scholarship 
was  considerable.  No  better  luck  can  befall  a  boy 
who  can  avail  himself  of  it  than  to  be  left  to  himself 
among  good  books  while  his  mind  is  quite  fresh  ;  and 
Tennyson  made  full  use  of  the  Rector's  ample  library. 
His  earliest  verses,  at  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  of  age, 
show  uncommon  promise ;  and  in  1826,  when  he  was 
seventeen,  were  published  the  Poems  by  Two  Brothers 
(Alfred  and  Charles)  upon  a  variety  of  subjects,  grave 
and  gay,  evidently  drawn  from  wide  miscellaneous 
reading :  the  metrical  composition  is  promising,  while 
there  are  occasional  signs  of  that  descriptive  faculty 
which  matured  so  rapidly  in  Tennyson's  later  works. 
In  1828  he  went,  with  his  brother  Charles,  to  Cam- 
bridge, and  matriculated  at  Trinity  College,  where 
at  first  Alfred,  being  accustomed  to  home  life,  and  not 
having  passed  through  the  preparatory  ordeal  of  a 
public  school,  found  himself  solitary  and  ill  at  ease. 

"  I  know  not  how  it  is,  but  I  feel  isolated  here  in  the  midst 
of  society.  The  country  is  so  disgustingly  level,  the  revelry 
of  the  place  so  monotonous,  the  studies  of  the  University  so 
uninteresting,  so  much  matter  of  fact.  None  but  dry-headed, 
angular,  calculating  little  gentlemen  can  take  much  delight  in 
them."  ! 

But  his  face  and  figure  were  both  very  remarkable, 
and  his  rare  intellectual  qualities  could  not  long  remain 
1  Memoir,  vol.  i.  p.  34. 


I.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  5 

undiscovered.  The  list  given  in  the  Memoir  of  the 
friends  with  whom  he  consorted  shows  that  he  soon 
became  intimate  with  the  best  men  at  Cambridge, 
whose  admiration  and  attachment  he  rapidly  won. 
It  is  evident  that  he  had  already  a  notable  gift  of  terse 
and  forcible  expression,  and  the  turn  for  apt  metaphors 
which  comes  from  a  lively  imagination.  He  lived 
among  men  who  made  the  right  use  of  a  University, 
who  delighted  in  the  interchange  of  ideas  and  opinions, 
in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  in  the  discussion  of 
politics,  in  literature,  speculation,  and  scientific  dis- 
coveries ;  who  were  keenly  interested  in  the  world 
around  them,  and  in  the  condition  of  their  own  country. 
In  short,  he  was  one  of  the  few  great  English  poets 
who  have  fallen  in  readily  with  the  ways  and  manners 
of  a  cultured  class  and  their  social  surroundings,  who 
did  not  in  their  youth  either  hold  themselves  apart 
from  the  ordinary  life  of  school  or  college,  or  live 
recklessly,  or  rebel  against  social  conventions. 

As  the  poets  of  the  foregoing  generation  had 
been  profoundly  stirred  in  their  first  manhood  by 
the  revolutionary  tumult  in  France,  so  Tennyson  felt 
and  sympathised,  though  more  moderately,  with  the 
English  agitation  for  reform.  But  in  1830  the  period 
of  wild  enthusiasm  for  freedom,  for  the  rights  of  man 
and  for  abstract  political  theories,  had  passed  away; 
the  vague  hatred  of  priests  and  despots  had  become 
toned  down  into  demands  for  reasonable  improvements 
of  Church  and  State.  It  was  an  age  of  practical 
Liberalism,  of  strong  intellectual  fermentation  stimu- 
lated by  the  growing  power  of  the  Press ;  of  ener- 
getic agitation  for  political,  economical,  and  legislative 
reforms  on  one  side,  resisted  on  the  other  side  by 


6  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

stubborn  defenders  of  antiquated  institutions  that  were 
believed  to  be  essential  safeguards  against  the  total 
overthrow  of  society.  In  those  days  the  ardent 
young  Liberal  had  a  definite  programme  and  a  clear 
objective  for  his  attack ;  though  his  impulse  might  be 
restrained  by  alarm  at  the  violent  methods  and  sweep- 
ing theories  that  were  in  vogue  with  extreme  and 
resolute  reformers.  Tennyson  was  never  of  a  sanguine 
temperament ;  and  his  reflective  mind  was  always 
liable  to  be  darkened  by  the  apprehension  of  con- 
sequences. He  represented,  naturally,  the  temperate 
opinions  on  questions  of  Church  and  State  of  an 
educated  Liberal,  with  whom  rioting  and  violent 
Kadicalism  strengthened  the  fellow-feeling  for  wide- 
spread distress,  and  for  the  real  needs  and  grievances 
of  the  people.  The  notes  of  bitter  irony,  the  spirit 
of  fierce  revolt  that  run  through  the  poetry  of  Byron 
and  Shelley,  belong  to  another  time  and  temper.  In 
Tennyson  we  have  the  Englishman's  ingrained  abhor- 
rence of  unruly  disorder,  the  tradition  of  a  State  well 
balanced,  of  liberty  fenced  in  by  laws,  of  veneration 
for  the  past;  we  have  the  hatred  of  fanaticism  in 
any  shape,  political  or  clerical,  the  distrust  of  popular 
impatience,  the  belief  in  the  gradual  betterment  of 
human  ills.  In  the  verses  to  Mary  Boyle,  written  long 
afterwards,  he  alludes  to  an  incident  that  cannot  but 
have  accentuated  his  innate  dread  of  mob-rule,  which 
comes  cut  in  several  passages  of  his  later  poems — 

"  In  rick-fire  days, 
When  Dives  loathed  the  times,  and  paced  his  land 

In  fear  of  worse, 

And  sanguine  Lazarus  felt  a  vacant  hand 
Fill  with  his  purse  ; 


i.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  7 

For  lowly  minds  were  madden'd  to  the  height 

By  tonguester  tricks, 
And  once — I  well  remember  that  red  night 

When  thirty  ricks, 
All  flaming,  made  an  English  homestead  Hell— 

These  hands  of  mine 
Have  helpt  to  pass  a  bucket  from  the  well 

Along  the  line." 

When  he  was  asked  what  politics  he  held,  he  answered 
characteristically,  '  I  am  of  the  same  politics  as  Shake- 
speare, Bacon,  and  every  sane  man ' ;  and  he  might  not 
have  objected  to  be  classed,  theologically,  among  those 
who  restrict  their  confession  of  faith  to  the  declaration 
that  they  hold  the  religion  of  all  sensible  men. 

That  Tennyson  was  numbered  among  the  Apostles 
at  Cambridge  may  be  reckoned  as  a  sign  of  his  early 
reputation;  the  more  so  because  he  appears  to  have 
contributed  very  little,  either  by  speech  or  writing,  to 
the  free  discussions  on  things  temporal  and  spiritual 
of  that  notable  society.  He  is  depicted  as  smoking 
and  meditating,  sitting  in  front  of  the  fire,  summing 
up  argument  in  one  short  phrase ;  and  the  only  essay 
that  he  produced  he  was  too  modest  to  deliver.  Of 
the  Apostles  various  reminiscences  survive;  the  sub- 
joined extract  may  be  quoted  to  explain  its  constitu- 
tion and  character : — 

"  The  very  existence  of  this  body  was  scarcely  known  to  the 
University  at  large,  and  its  members  held  reticence  to  be  a 
point  of  honour.  .  .  .  The  members  were  on  the  lookout  for 
any  indications  of  intellectual  originality,  academical  or  other- 
wise, and  specially  contemptuous  of  humbug,  cant,  and  the 
qualities  of  the  windbag  in  general.  To  be  elected,  there- 
fore, was  virtually  to  receive  a  certificate  from  some  of  your 
cleverest  contemporaries  that  they  regarded  you  likely  to  be 


8  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  future  an  eminent  man.  The  judgment  so  passed  was 
perhaps  as  significant  as  that  implied  by  University  honours, 
and  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  Apostles  have  justified  the 
anticipation  of  their  fellows."  1 

In  Tennyson's  case  the  apostolic  prophecy  has  been 
undoubtedly  fulfilled ;  and  his  prize  poem  on  Timbuc- 
too,  written  in  his  twentieth  year,  soon  appeared  to 
confirm  among  his  friends  their  first  augury  of  his 
future  celebrity.  It  was  patched  up,  he  tells  us,  from 
an  old  poem  on  the  Battle  of  Armageddon,  a  curious 
adaptation  of  subjects  that  might  be  supposed  to  have 
nothing  in  common;  except,  possibly,  such  hazy  dis- 
tances of  space  and  time  as  might  afford  wide  scope  to 
a  poet's  imagination. 

Academic  distinction  in  verse  may  have  often  sug- 
gested predictions  of  coming  fame,  yet  these  are  rarely 
fulfilled,  for  the  stars  of  poetical  genius  run  in  irregular 
courses.  Tennyson's  poem  had  the  usual  qualities  of 
correct  taste  and  polished  diction,  but  it  also  showed 
much  originality  of  treatment  and  creative  fancy ;  for 
the  writer,  instead  of  attempting  the  unpromising  task 
of  describing  a  den  of  savages,  or  of  rendering  poetically 
the  accounts  brought  home  by  travellers,  places  him- 
self on  a  mountain  that  overlooks  the  great  ocean, 
muses  over  the  fabled  Atlantis,  dreams  of  Eldorado, 
and  asks — 

"Wide  Afric,  doth  thy  Sun 
Lighten,  thy  hills  unfold  a  city  as  fair 
As  those  which  starred  the  night  of  the  elder  world  ? 
Or  is  the  rumour  of  thy  Timbuctoo 
A'  dream  as  frail  as  those  of  ancient  time  ?  " 

He   is  wondering  whether  the  reality  of  some   such 
1  Life  of  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  by  Leslie  Stephen. 


i.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  9 

glorious  vision  may  not  be  hidden  far  in  the  recesses 
of  the  dark  Continent.  To  him  appears  the  Spirit  of 
the  Ideal,  symbolising 

"  The  permeating  life  which  courses  through 
All  th'  intricate  and  labyrinthine  veins 
Of  the  great  mine  of  Fable," 

and  shows  him  a  river  winding  through 

"  The  argent  streets  of  the  city,  imaging 
The  soft  inversion  of  her  tremulous  domes." 

But 

"  The  time  has  well  nigh  come 
When  I  must  render  up  this  glorious  home 
To  keen  Discovery," 

when  the  brilliant  towers  shall  shrink  and  shiver  into 
huts 

"  Black  specks  amid  a  waste  of  dreary  sand 
Low-built,  mud- walled,  barbarian  settlements. 
How  changed  from  this  fair  city  ! " 

This,  the  first,  poem  of  Tennyson  is  worth  notice 
because  it  contains  in  embryo  the  qualities  which 
emerge  in  his  later  verse,  his  delight  in  picturesque 
and  luxuriant  description,  his  meditative  power  of 
falling  into  moods  which  give  full  scope,  as  in  a  trance 
or  dream,  to  the  roving  imagination ;  his  manner  of 
presenting  ideas  symbolically.  Although  Charles 
Wordsworth  wrote  of  it  that  at  Oxford  the  poem 
might  have  qualified  its  author  for  a  lunatic  asylum, 
Arthur  Hallam,  who  was  beaten  in  the  competition, 
laid  stress,  in  a  letter  to  W.  E.  Gladstone,  on  its 
"  splendid  imaginative  power,"  and  said  that  he  con- 
sidered Tennyson  as  "  promising  fair  to  be  the  greatest 
poet  of  our  generation  " — a  remarkably  far-seeing  pre- 


10  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

diction  to  have  been  built  on  so  slender  a  founda- 
tion. A  review  in  the  Athenceum  (at  that  time  under 
the  joint-editorship  of  John  Sterling  and  Frederick 
Maurice)  declared  that  it  "indicated  really  first-rate 
poetical  genius,  which  would  have  done  honour  to 
any  man  that  ever  wrote."  The  poem,  in  blank 
verse,  was  recited  in  the  Senate  House  by  the  late 
Dean  Merivale,  since  the  ordeal  was  too  much  for 
Tennyson's  habitual  diffidence. 

The  Memoir  has  preserved  for  us  several  poems 
written  by  Tennyson  at  Cambridge  (1828-1831)  that 
were  never  published.  In  one  of  these,  "  Anacaona," 
which  was  suppressed  (we  are  told)  because  the  natural 
history  and  the  rhymes  did  not  satisfy  him,  the  verses 
are  full  of  glowing  tropical  scenery  ;  but  at  that  time 
he  did  not  care  for  absolute  descriptive  accuracy.  The 
scientific  spirit,  in  fact,  had  not  yet  laid  its  hold  on 
him ;  and  the  following  stanza,  given  here  as  a  sample, 
shows  that  he  was  taking  his  juvenile  pleasure  in 
sumptuous  colouring  and  in  sounding  versification — 

"  In  the  purple  island, 

Crown'd  with  garlands  of  cinchona. 
Lady  over  wood  and  highland, 

The  Indian  queen,  Anacaona, 
Dancing  on  the  blossomy  plain 

To  a  woodland  melody  : 
Playing  with  the  scarlet  crane, 
The  dragon-fly  and  scarlet  crane, 

Beneath  the  papao  tree  ! 
Happy,  happy  was  Anacaona, 

The  beavity  of  Espagnola, 

The  golden  flower  of  Hayti ! " 

The  "Song  of  the  three  Sisters"  is  in  the  same 
early  manner,  yet  it  clearly  presages  his  later  dithy- 


I.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  11 

ra,mbic  style ;  and  the  blank  verse  in  the  prelude 
exhibits  the  undeveloped  quality  of  an  artist  in 
romantic  landscape-painting- — 

"  The  North  -wind  fall'n,  in  the  new-starred  night 
Zidonian  Hanno,  wandering  heyond 
The  hoary  promontory  of  Soloe, 
Past  Thymiaterion  in  calmed  bays 
Between  the  southern  and  the  western  Horn, 
Heard  neither  warbling  of  the  nightingale, 
Nor  melody  o'  the  Libyan  Lotus-flute 
Blown  seaward  from  the  shore  ;  hut  from  a  slope 
That  ran  bloom-bright  into  the  Atlantic  blue, 
Beneath  a  highland  leaning  down  a  weight 
Of  cliffs,  and  zoned  below  with  cedar-shade, 
Came  voices  like  the  voices  hi  a  dream 
Continuous — till  he  reach'd  the  outer  sea." 

Another  piece  may  be  worth  quoting,  as  the  first 
indication  of  the  brooding  philosophic  mind  that  is 
reflected  through  so  much  of  Tennyson's  poetry — 

"  Thou  may'st  remember  what  I  said 
When  thine  own  spirit  was  at  strife 
With  thine  own  spirit.     '  From  the  tomb 
And  charnel-place  of  purpose  dead, 
Thro'  spiritual  dark  we  come 
Into  the  light  of  spiritual  life.' 

God  walk'd  the  waters  of  thy  soul, 

And  still'd  them.     When  from  change  to  change, 

Led  silently  by  power  divine, 

Thy  thought  did  scale  a  purer  range 

Of  prospect  up  to  self-control, 

My  joy  was  only  less  than  thine." 

In  these  lines  we  have  the  contemplative  mood 
struggling  into  as  yet  imperfect  metrical  expression; 
and  the  two  foregoing  quotations  may  be  taken  to 


12  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  i. 

illustrate  two  salient  characteristics  of  all  Tenny- 
son's poetry — his  delight  in  external  beauty,  and  the 
inward  uneasiness  of  a  mind  oppressed  by  the  enigma 
of  human  existence,  yet  finding  solace  in  a  kind  of 
spiritual  quietism,  and  in  the  glimmer  of  light  some- 
where far  beyond  the  surrounding  darkness. 


CHAPTER  II 

POEMS,  1830-1842 

BEFORE  he  left  Cambridge  (where  he  did  not  wait  for 
a  degree),  his  "Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical,"  were  published. 
It  has  already  been  observed  that  a  group  of  original 
poets  take  up  the  whole  ground  of  their  generation ; 
they  so  act  upon  their  audience,  and  are  again  reacted 
upon  sympathetically,  that,  for  a  time,  nothing  new  is 
said  or  shaped.  This  may  account,  in  some  degree,  for 
the  barren  interval  that  may  be  noticed  in  the  annals 
of  a  country's  literature ;  there  was  one  such  interval 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  era 
of  classic  composition  had  closed,  and  the  Romantic 
spirit,  just  born,  had  as  yet  become  hardly  articulate ; 
and  since  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
another  dearth  of  poetry  has  set  in.  At  the  present 
moment  the  field  is  still  held  by  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, nor  has  their  challenger  yet  appeared  in  the  lists. 
When  Tennyson  came  forward  in  1830  the  mar- 
vellous constellation  of  poets  that  illumined  the 
first  quarter  of  the  century  had  almost  vanished,  in 
the  sense  of  their  work  being  finished ;  for  although 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Scott  were  still  alive, 
they  had  attained  immortality ;  they  were  above  and 
beyond  the  special  influences  of  an  altering  world; 
they  could  not  interpret  or  inform  the  aspirations  or 
disquietudes  of  a  younger  generation.  Those  subtle, 

18 


14  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

indefinable  modifications  of  style  and  feeling,  con- 
tinuous yet  always  changing,  which  go  on  in  the 
world  and  around  us,  are  nowhere  more  clearly  per- 
ceptible than  in  poetry :  the  impress  of  a  great  master 
in  any  art  deeply  affects  his  immediate  successors ;  but 
he  has  almost  always  given  his  best  to  his  contem- 
poraries in  early  manhood,  and  the  school  which  he 
has  founded  can  do  little  more  than  imitate  him. 
When,  as  in  Tennyson's  case,  he  keeps  the  field  and 
retains  his  productive  powers  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  he  may  be  likened  to  a  great  spreading  tree 
that  checks  the  upspring  of  vigorous  undergrowth  ;  he 
remains  the  model  and  criterion  of  poetic  excellence. 
Yet  an  unconscious  feeling  that  the  vein  has  been 
nearly  worked  out  produces  the  desire  for  novelty; 
while  there  is  simultaneously  a  continuous  growth  of 
fresh  ideas  engendered  by  changing  views  of  life, 
which  demand  their  own  interpreter,  and  have  to  fight 
hard  for  ascendency  against  the  established  taste. 
Here  may  probably  be  found  one  reason  why  the 
established  organs  of  criticism  so  often  go  wrong  in 
their  estimate  of  an  original  writer  when  he  first  comes 
before  the  public ;  they  judge  by  a  literary  standard 
that  is  becoming  superseded;  they  are  out  of  touch 
with  the  movements  of  the  advancing  party;  they 
often  maintain  a  sound  aesthetic  tradition,  but  they 
are  slow  to  amend  or  enlarge  their  laws  in  accordance 
with  new  feelings  and  methods;  they  notice  short- 
comings and  irregularities,  but  they  sometimes  lack 
discernment  of  the  very  qualities  which  attract  the 
poet's  contemporaries.1  We  know  that  even  Coleridge, 

1  An  acute  and  very  interesting  dissertation  on  the  develop- 
ment of  aesthetic  taste  and  fashion  may  be  read  in  Mr.  Arthur 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  15 

though  he  saw  much  beauty  in  Tennyson's  poems,  said 
that  he  could  scarcely  scan  the  verses,  and  passed  upon 
them  the  criticism  that  the  new  poet  had  begun  to 
write  poetry  without  very  well  knowing  what  metre 
is.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  Coleridge  said  in  his 
Table  Talk  (April  1830)—"  Mr.  Tennyson's  sonnets, 
such  as  I  have  read,  have  many  of  the  characteristic 
excellences  of  Wordsworth  and  South ey."  It  was 
long  before  the  Quarterly  Review,  which  began  by 
treating  him  with  contempt,  could  find  anything 
better  for  Tennyson  than  sarcastic  approbation.  Yet 
the  article  in  Blackwood,  on  his  first  volume,  by  "  Chris- 
topher North,"  does  show  considerable  discrimination, 
and  on  the  whole,  although  Tennyson  naturally  resented 
it,  must  have  been  rather  to  his  advantage  than  other- 
wise ;  for  the  critic  undoubtedly  hit  with  sharp  but  not 
unkindly  ridicule  the  marks  of  affectation  and  lavish 
ornament  that  belonged  to  the  poet's  immaturity.  Most 
of  the  pieces  which  Blackwood  condemned  were  rightly 
omitted  in  subsequent  editions ;  and  in  regard  to  those 
which  he  praised,  the  judgment  has  been  generally 
upheld  by  later  opinion.  But  a  new  writer's  surest 
augury  of  future  success  is  to  be  found  in  an  ardent 
welcome  by  his  contemporaries ;  it  is  a  sign  that  he  is 
not  a  mere  imitator,  however  artistic,  of  past  models, 
that  he  has  caught  the  spirit  and  is  quickening  the 
emotions  of  the  generation  with  which  he  has  to  live. 
Arthur  Hallam  wrote  enthusiastically  of  the  Lyrical 
Poems  in  the  Englishman's  Magazine ;  and  in  the  West- 
minster Review  John  Bowring  hailed  the  advent  of  an 
original  poet,  with  powers  that  imposed  upon  him  high 

Balfour's  book  on  the  Foundations  of  Belief,  chap.  ii.  sections 
1  and  2. 


16  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

responsibility  for  the  use  of  them.  Some  of  the  pieces 
contained  in  this  first  edition  were  omitted  in  subse- 
quent reprints,  though  of  these  several  reappeared 
later ;  and  all  that  Tennyson  decided  to  preserve  stand 
in  the  latest  collective  edition  under  the  title  of 
"  Juvenilia."  Here,  again,  as  throughout  his  later  work, 
we  have  the  poet's  tendency  to  doubts  and  to  gloomy 
meditation  on  man's  short  and  sorrowful  existence, 
side  by  side  with  a  kind  of  rapturous  delight  in  the 
beauties  of  nature  and  the  glories  of  art.  We  have 
the  "Confessions  of  a  Sensitive  Mind"  that  finds  no 
comfort  in  creeds,  and  ends  with  the  prayer  for  light — 

"  Oh  teach  me  yet 
Somewhat  before  the  heavy  clod 
Weighs  on  me,  and  the  busy  fret 
Of  that  sharp-headed  worm  begins 
In  the  gross  blackness  underneath," 

followed  closely  by  the  brilliant  vision  of  Oriental 
splendour  in  the  "  Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights." 

"  Then  stole  I  up,  and  trancedly 
Gazed  on  the  Persian  girl  alone, 
Serene  with  argent-lidded  eyes 
Amorous,  and  lashes  like  to  rays 
Of  darkness,  and  a  brow  of  pearl 
Tressed  with  redolent  ebony, 
In  many  a  dark  delicious  curl, 
Flowing  beneath  her  rose-hued  zone ; 
The  sweetest  lady  of  the  time, 
Well  worthy  of  the  golden  prime 
Of  good  Haroun  Alraschid." 

Verily  a  sight  to  dispel  carking  intellectual  anxieties. 
It  may  be  remarked,  however,  that  in  this  passage,  as 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  17 

also  in  the  amorous  lyrics  to  Isabel  and  Madeline, 
which  are  full  of  delicate  voluptuousness,  the  juve- 
nile poet  is  too  pictorial;  his  way  of  producing  an 
image  of  lovely  woman  is  by  enumerating  her 
charms;  he  describes  beauty  in  detail  as  it  might 
be  painted,  instead  of  describing  its  effects,  as  the 
great  poets,  from  Homer  downward,  arc  usually 
content  to  do.  Although  Tennyson's  natural  artistic 
feeling  corrected  his  earlier  manner  in  this  respect, 
yet  the  propensity  to  be  descriptive,  to  elaborate  a 
picture  as  a  painter  works  upon  his  canvas,  remained 
throughout  a  leading  characteristic  of  his  poetic 
style. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  his  first  volume 
Tennyson  made  a  journey  to  the  Pyrenees,  where  he 
had  some  secret  meetings  with  the  Spanish  refugees 
who,  under  Torrigo's  leadership,  were  concerting  the 
rash  enterprise  against  the  Spanish  government  that 
ended  with  the  military  execution  of  the  whole  party 
when  they  landed  near  Malaga  in  November  1831. 
He  returned  to  live  at  Somersby,  and  about  this  time 
more  verses  were  circulating  among  his  friends,  by 
whom,  particularly  by  Arthur  Hallam,  he  was  urged 
to  publish  them.  At  Cambridge  they  received  unani- 
mous Apostolic  benediction,  with  perpetual  reading 
and  diverse  commentaries,  until  they  were  brought 
out  toward  the  end  of  1832.  The  "Lover's  Tale," 
written  in  the  poet's  nineteenth  year,  and  partly 
printed,  was  judiciously  withdrawn  from  this  issue 
at  the  last  moment.  A  long  poem  in  blank  verse, 
betraying  immaturities  of  style  which  the  other 
pieces  showed  him  to  have  outgrown,  would  have 
marred,  as  Tennyson  himself  said,  the  complete- 

B 


18  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ness  of  the  book,  and  would  certainly  have  added 
more  weight  than  worth  to  the  collection.  For 
this  volume  undoubtedly  contains  some  of  the  most 
exquisite  poetry  that  he  ever  wrote — "Mariana  in  the 
South,"  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  and  "The  Palace  of 
Art." 

His  method  of  producing  an  impression  by  grouping 
details  was  used  with  great  skill  in  these  poems  for 
scenic  effects.  In  Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange 
we  see  how  a  few  words  can  take  hold  of  and 
enchant  the  fancy  until  it  conjures  up  images  of 
the  landscape,  the  mournful  aspect  of  a  decay- 
ing house  in  a  level  waste,  the  chill  air  of  grey 
dawn,  the  varying  moods  of  despondency  that 
follow  the  alternations  of  sun  and  shadow,  of 
light  and  darkness,  as  they  pass  before  a  solitary 
watcher  who  looks  vainly  for  some  one  who  never 
comes — 

"  About  a  stone-cast  from  the  wall 

A  sluice  with  blacken'd  waters  slept, 
And  o'er  it  many,  round  and  small, 

The  cluster'd  marish-mosses  crept. 
Hard  by  a  poplar  shook  alway, 

All  silver-green  with  gnarled  bark  : 
For  leagues  no  other  tree  did  mark 
The  level  waste,  the  rounding  gray. 
She  only  said,  '  My  life  is  dreary, 

He  cometh  not,'  she  said  ; 
She  said,  '  I  am  aweary,  aweary, 
I  would  that  I  were  dead  ! ' " 

This  profusion  of  accurate  detail  in  filling  up  the 
picture  is  very  characteristic  of  Tennyson's  manner,  so 
different  from  Wordsworth's,  who  is  usually  content  to 


li.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  19 

paint  the  background  of  his  figures  by  a  few  strokes.1 
This  rare  power  of  giving  atmosphere  to  a  poem — of 
suggesting  the  correspondence  and  interaction  between 
the  mind  and  its  surroundings,  between  the  situation 
and  the  subjective  feelings — comes  out  even  more 
forcibly  in  Mariana  irf  the  South,  where  we  have  the 
troubled  sleep  in  exhaustion  produced  by  intense  heat, 
with  the  dream  of  cool  breezes  and  running  brooks, 
and  the  waking  to  consciousness  of  bare  desolation — 

"  She  woke  :  the  babble  of  the  stream 
Fell,  and,  without,  the  steady  glare 

Shrank  one  sick  willow  sere  and  small. 
The  river-bed  was  dusty-white  ; 
And  all  the  furnace  of  the  light 

Struck  up  against  the  blinding  wall." 

To  those  who  have  been  besieged  and  cooped  up  for 
many  hours  by  the  fierce  sun  beating  against  the  walls 
of  some  dismal  place  of  shelter,  these  lines  will  vividly 
recall  a  familiar  sensation. 

When  this  poem,  first  published  in  1832,  reappeared 
ten  years  later,  it  had  been  almost  rewritten ;  but  by 
comparing  the  two  versions  one  can  see  how  Tennyson 
had  pruned  and  condensed  his  style,  always  aiming  at 
greater  precision,  and  at  producing  the  vivid  impression 
in  fewer  words.  It  may  be  interesting  to  set  the  two 
opening  stanzas  of  each  version  side  by  side. 

1  For  example,  in  "  The  Tables  Turned — An  Evening  Scene," 
there  is  but  one  descriptive  stanza — 

"  The  sun,  above  the  mountain's  head, 
A  freshening  lustre  mellow 
Through  all  the  long  green  fields  has  spread, 
His  first  sweet  evening  yellow. " 


20 


TENNYSON 


[CHAP. 


(1842.) 

"  With  one  black  shadow  at  its  feet, 
The   house  thro'   all   the   level 

shines, 
Close-latticed  to  the  brooding  heat, 

And  silent  in  its  dusty  vines : 
A  faint-blue  ridge  upon  the  right, 
An  empty  river-bed  before, 
And  shallows  on  a  distant  shore, 
In  glaring  sand  and  inlets  bright. 
But  'Ave    Mary,'    made  she 

moan, 
And  'Ave  Mary,'  night  and 

morn, 
And  '  Ah,'  she  sang,  '  to  be  all 

alone, 

To  live  forgotten,  and  love 
forlorn.'" 


(1832.) 

"  Behind  the  barren  hills  upsprung 
With  pointed  rocks  against  the 

light, 

The  crag  sharpshadowed  overhung 
Each   glaring    creek    and   inlet 

bright. 
Far,  far,  one  light  blue  ridge  was 

seen, 

Looming  like  baseless  fairyland 

Eastward  a  ship  of  burning  sand, 

Dark  rimmed  with  sea,  and  bare  of 

green. 

Down  in  the  dry  salt-marshes  stood 
That  house  dark-latticed.    Not  a 

breath 

Swayed  the  rich  vineyard  under- 
neath, 

Or  moved  the  dusty  southernwood. 
Madonna,  with  melodious  moan, 

Sang  Mariana,  night  and  morn — 
Madonna,  lo  !  I  am  all  alone, 
Love-forgotten  and  love-forlorn." 


In  both  versions  the  abundance  of  epithets  is  remark- 
able; there  is  hardly  a  substantive  unqualified;  but 
in  the  later  version  the  description  is  less  particular, 
and  altogether  much  more  compressed. 

The  moral  of  The  Palace  of  Art  is  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  external  beauty  to  ward  off  the  discon- 
tent, gradually  sinking  into  despair,  that  invades  a 
soul  when  it  has  planned  out  a  life  of  God-like  isolation 
among  the  most  perfect  creations  of  painting,  statuary, 
and  architecture.  Form  and  colour,  great  historical 
portraits,  splendid  landscapes,  the  purity  of  marble, 
the  rich  light  pouring  in  through  stained  glass,  adorn 
the  Palace  of  Art.  The  working  out  of  such  a  design 
strains  the  power  of  descriptive  poetry  to  its  utmost 
effort ;  for  here  it  enters  into  a  kind  of  rivalry  with 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  21 

the  sister  arts  on  their  own  ground :  the  poet  must 
imagine  images ;  he  is  imitating  Nature  at  second- 
hand, and  is  among  all  the  snares  that  beset  word- 
painting.  Tennyson  attempted,  but  abandoned,  the 
arduous  task  of  "doing  a  statue  in  verse";  he  struck 
out  the  five  stanzas  introducing  the  statues  of  Elijah 
and  Olympias ;  he  shortened  his  catalogue  and  weeded 
out  his  gallery;  and  the  alterations  which  the  poem 
underwent  in  successive  editions  show  the  labour  that 
it  cost  him.  He  thus  succeeded  in  executing  a  series 
of  exquisitely  finished  pictures,  having  in  his  mind, 
possibly,  the  Homeric  shield  of  Achilles ;  though  the 
scenes  on  the  shield  represent  movement,  as  on  a 
temple's  frieze,  whereas  Tennyson  portrays  also  single 
incidents,  figures,  or  effects  of  still  life,  as  in  a  great 
picture  gallery : — 

"  And  one,  a  full-fed  river  winding  slow 

By  herds  upon  an  endless  plain, 
The  ragged  rims  of  thunder  brooding  low, 
With  shadow-streaks  of  rain. 

Nor  these  alone,  but  every  landscape  fair, 

As  fit  for  every  mood  of  mind, 
Or  gay,  or  grave,  or  sweet,  or  stern,  was  there 

Not  less  than  truth  design'd." 

In  each  stanza  the  keynote  or  motif  is  struck  with 
a  masterly  power  of  suggestion,  until  we  return  to 
what  poetry  alone  can  express — the  soul's  delight  in 
a  representation  of  external  beauty,  and  finally  the 
intellectual  weariness  and  spiritual  prostration  of  the 
soul  among  all  this  outward  magnificence. 

"0  all  things  fair  to  sate  my  various  eyes  ! 

O  shapes  and  hues  that  please  me  well ! 
0  silent  faces  of  the  Great  and  Wise, 
My  Gods,  with  whom  I  dwell  1 " 


22  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Her  God-like  isolation  sinks  into  a  feeling  of  consterna- 
tion at  her  solitude — 

"  As  in  strange  lands  a  traveller  walking  slow, 

In  doubt  and  great  perplexity, 
A  little  before  moon-rise  hears  the  low 
Moan  of  an  unknown  sea." 

Perfection  of  culture,  Art  for  Art's  sake,  has  no  deep 
root  in  the  heart  of  man,  and  flowers  but  to  fade 
rapidly ;  it  strikes  a  deep  root  only  when  it  gives  a 
moral  representation  of  life. 

Yet  nothing  is  more  rare  or  difficult  than  the 
presentation  of  some  general  truth,  in  prose  or  verse, 
by  a  story  with  inner  significance,  like  the  parables 
of  a  religious  teacher.  By  symbolism,  which  is  a  more 
delicate  instrument  than  metaphor,  the  second  term 
of  the  comparison,  the  application  of  the  narrative,  is 
intimated  but  not  expressed.  If  the  meaning  is  vague 
or  too  much  hidden,  it  is  missed ;  if  it  is  brought  out 
too  obviously,  the  mysterious  charm  disappears.  In 
The  Lady  of  Shalott  we  are  not  far  below  the  high- 
water  mark  of  symbolic  poetry,  the  art  which  one  of 
the  latest  schools  of  French  poetry  has  been  practising 
with  doubtful  success,  being  foiled  mainly  by  the  in- 
curable lucidity  and  precision  of  the  French  language. 
The  final  version  of  this  poem  shows  much  less  revision 
than  in  most  of  his  early  writings,  although  the  careful 
pruning  away  of  anything  that  might  sound  trivial  or 
familiar  is  observable  in  such  alterations  as  that  where- 
by the  Lady  now  writes  her  name  "round  about  the 
prow,"  instead  of  "below  the  stern,"  where  she  wrote 
it  originally,  and  where  an  ordinary  boatman  would 
have  painted  it.  And  since  The  Lady  of  Shalott  is 
one  of  Tennyson's  masterpieces,  we  may  select  it  as  an 


li.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  23 

example  of  his  genius  at  a  period  when  he  had  brought 
the  form  and  conception  of  his  poetry  up  to  a  point 
which  he  never  afterwards  surpassed. 

Undoubtedly  his  work  is  throughout  elaborate,  in 
the  sense  that  he  meditated  long  over  the  composition, 
and  spared  no  pains  to  attain  perfection.  Tennyson 
arranged  and  polished  indefatigably  his  blank  verse, 
that  purely  English  metre  which  more  than  any  other 
gives  scope  to  scientific  construction,  disdaining  the 
adventitious  aid  of  rhyme.  The  normal  line  consists, 
as  every  one  knows,  of  five  iambics  marked  not  only  by 
quantity  but  also  by  accentuation ;  and  it  is  the  mobility 
of  the  English  accent,  as  compared  with  the  regularity 
of  prosodial  notation,  that  gives  such  freedom  to 
English  verse,  and  is  one  of  the  elements  that  combine 
to  make  our  language  so  excellent  for  poetry.  And 
the  skill  of  the  consummate  artist  in  blank  verse  finds 
its  triumph  in  the  infinite  variety  of  measured  sounds 
which  he  can  draw  from  a  five-stringed  instrument 
that  seems  easy  to  play  upon,  yet  is  droning  and 
tedious  in  all  but  a  few  hands.1 

The  return,  so  noticeable  in  English  poets  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  the  divine  and  heroic  myths  of 
ancient  Greece,  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  Keats, 
who  endowed  them  with  new  life  by  the  ardent  play  of 
his  romantic  imagination,  and  did  it  none  the  worse 
for  his  slight  acquaintance  with  the  originals.  Tenny- 
son continued  a  similar  treatment  of  them  with  much 
more  accurate  knowledge.  The  concrete  and  sculp- 
tured figures  of  the  antique  legend  or  fable,  in  (Enone, 
Ulysses,  and  Tithonus,  were  endued  with  warmth  and 

1  See  Chapters  on  English  Metre,  by  J.  B.  Mayor  (1886). 


24  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

fresh  colour  by  becoming  the  impersonations  of  the 
impulses  and  affections  of  modern  life — love  unre- 
quited, lassitude,  restlessness,  the  roaming  spirit,  the 
ennui  of  old  age,  philosophic  ardour  or  serenity. 

The  poem  of  (Enone  is  the  first  of  Tennyson's 
elaborate  essays  in  a  metre  over  which  he  afterwards 
obtained  an  eminent  command.  It  is  also  the  first 
of  his  idylls  and  of  his  classical  studies,  with  their 
melodious  rendering  of  the  Homeric  epithets  and  the 
composite  words,  which  Tennyson  had  the  art  of 
coining  after  the  Greek  manner  ("lily-cradled,5  "river- 
sundered,"  "  dewy-dashed  ")  for  compact  description  or 
ornament.  Several  additions  were  made  in  a  later 
edition;  and  the  corrections  then  made  show  with 
what  sedulous  care  the  poet  diversified  the  structure 
of  his  lines,  changing  the  pauses  that  break  the  mono- 
tonous run  of  blank  verse,  and  avoiding  the  use  of 
weak  terminals  when  the  line  ends  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence.  The  opening  of  the  poem  was  in  this  manner 
decidedly  improved  ;  yet  one  may  judge  that  the  finest 
passages  are  still  to  be  found  almost  as  they  stood  in 
the  original  version ;  and  the  concluding  lines,  in  which 
the  note  of  anguish  culminates,  are  left  untouched  : — 

"  0  mother,  hear  me  yet  before  I  die. 
Hear  me,  0  earth.     I  will  not  die  alone, 
Lest  their  shrill  happy  laughter  come  to  me 
Walking  the  cold  and  starless  road  of  Death 
Uncomforted,  leaving  my  ancient  love 
With  the  Greek  woman." 

Nevertheless  the  blank  verse  of  (Enone  lacks  the  even 
flow  and  harmonious  balance  of  entire  sections  in  the 
Morte  d'Arthur  or  Ulysses,  where  the  lines  are  swift 
or  slow,  rise  to  a  point  and  fall  gradually,  in  cadences 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  25 

arranged  to  correspond  with  the  dramatic  movement, 
showing  that  the  poet  has  extended  and  perfected  his 
metrical  resources.  The  later  style  is  simplified;  he  has 
rejected  cumbrous  metaphor ;  he  is  less  sententious ; 
he  has  pruned  away  the  flowery  exuberance  and  light- 
ened the  sensuous  colour  of  his  earlier  composition. 

In  the  Lotos-Eaters  we  have  an  old  Greek  fable  of 
wandering  sailors  reaching  an  unknown  land  of  fruit 
and  flowers ;  and  the  poem's  rich  long-drawn  melody, 
with  its  profusion  of  scenic  description,  is  in  strong 
contrast  to  the  quiet  line  and  feeling  of  the  Homeric 
narrative ;  where  the  impression  is  created  by  describ- 
ing, not  the  environment,  but  its  effect  upon  the  men. 
"Whosoever  did  eat  the  honey-sweet  fruit  of  the 
lotos  had  no  more  wish  to  bring  tidings  nor  to  come 
back,  but  there  he  chose  to  abide  with  the  lotos-eating 
men,  ever  feeding  on  the  lotos,  arid  forgetful  of  his 
homeward  way."  Out  of  this  the  modern  poet  creates 
a  splendid  choric  song,  of  way-worn  mariners  overcome 
by  dreamy  languor  in  a  beautiful  island,  to  whom  their 
homes  and  their  fatherland  are  becoming  no  more  than 
a  far-off  memory.  It  may  be  that  the  ancient  myth  is 
a  marvellous  tradition  of  some  real  incident,  when  a 
shipwrecked  crew  settled  down  upon  some  island  in 
a  climate  and  among  a  people  not  unlike  those  which 
were  discovered  by  the  first  European  adventurers 
in  the  South  Pacific  Ocean ;  for  even  in  the  story  of 
the  Mutiny  of  the  Bounty  we  can  trace  the  influence 
of  lotos-eating  upon  British  sailors.  The  concluding 
strophe  of  the  Ode  as  it  now  stands  was  substituted 
in  1843  for  lines  of  a  different  structure  and  very 
inferior  merit.  The  gods  of  Epicurus  are  the  proper 
divinities  of  the  lotos-eaters;  they  look  down  care- 


26  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

lessly  through  the  clouds  at  the  strife  and  misery  of 
the  world — 

"  Over  wasted  lands, 
Blight  and  famine,  plague  and  earthquake,  roaring  deeps  and 

fiery  sands, 
Clanging  fights,  and  flaming  towns,  and  sinking  ships,  and 

praying  hands." 

In  the  picture  of  luxurious  repose  as  the  ultimate 
bliss  attainable  both  in  this  world  and  in  heaven  we 
have  the  shadow  of  the  earth  projected  on  the  sky  ;  it 
is  that  natural  reflection  of  human  experience  and 
desires  which  is  the  common  source  of  all  primitive 
conceptions  of  a  future  existence. 

The  Quarterly  Review1  noticed  these  poems  in  a 
sarcastic  article  (by  Kinglake,  the  author  of  Eotheri) 
that  missed  all  the  beauties,  yet  hit  the  blots.  That 
the  criticism,  although  short-sighted  enough  as  an 
appreciation,  was  yet  salutary,  is  proved  by  the  cor- 
rections afterwards  made  by  Tennyson  in  passages 
where  the  thin  partition  that  divides  simplicity  from 
triviality  had  been  overstepped,  or  where  the  metre 
had  not  yet  attained  the  strength  and  sure  harmonic 
tones  of  his  later  workmanship.  These  old-fashioned 
reviewers,  like  the  headmasters  who  ruled  great  public 
schools  by  incessant  castigation,  laboured  honestly  in 
their  vocation  of  maintaining  the  classic  traditions; 
and  there  was  a  masculine  common-sense  in  their 
discipline  that  was  by  no  means  unwholesome.  But 
for  an  example  of  impenitent  conservatism  and  of 
insensibility  to  true  genius,  because  it  was  new,  the 
following  sentence  taken  from  an  article  in  the 
Quarterly  Review  2  upon  the  poems  of  Monckton  Milnes 
is  not  easily  to  be  matched : — 

1  1839.  2  Ibid. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  27 

"  We  are  quite  sure  that  he  [Milnes]  will  hereafter  obey  one 
good  precept  in  an  otherwise  doubtful  decalogue  : — 

'  Thou  shalt  believe  in  Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,' 

and  regret  few  sins  more  bitterly  than  the  homage  he  has  now 
rendered  at  the  fantastic  shrines  of  such  baby  idols  as  Mr. 
John  Keats  and  Mr.  Alfred  Tennyson." 

We  have  here  the  men  who  adore  the  great  image 
of  authority,  and  denounce  all  novelties  as  heretical. 
The  reviewer  adopts  Byron's  creed,  but  overlooks 
Byron's  own  triumphant  desertion  of  it;  for  in  his 
finest  poems  there  is  no  trace  of  the  great  masters 
whom  Byron  professed  to  worship.  He  received  a 
well-merited  rebuke  from  J.  S.  Mill,  who  wrote  in 
the  London  Review  (1835)  an  article  condemning  the 
short-sighted  incompetency  of  the  Quarterly's  critic, 
recognising  Tennyson  as  a  true  artist  of  high  promise, 
and  passing  upon  The  Lady  of  Shalott  a  judgment  in 
which  the  present  writer  ventures  entirely  to  agree  : — 

"  Except  that  the  versification  is  less  exquisite,  '  The  Lady 
of  Shalott'  is  entitled  to  a  place  by  the  side  of  the  'Ancient 
Mariner'  and  '  Christabel."3 

For  it  should  not  have  been  difficult  to  perceive 
that  in  this  second  volume  of  poems  the  promise  and 
potency  of  Tennyson's  genius  were  clearly  visible,  and 
that  the  ascent  was  gradual  because  the  aims  were 
high.  The  blemishes  often  signified  no  more  than 
exuberant  strength ;  and  James  Montgomery's  observa- 
tion of  him  at  this  stage  is  generally  true  as  a  standing 
test  of  latent  powers  in  a  beginner  : — 

"  He  has  very  wealthy  and  luxurious  thought  and  great 
beauty  of  expression,  and  is  a  poet.  But  there  is  plenty  of 
room  for  improvement,  and  I  would  have  it  so.  Your  trim 


28  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

correct  young  writers  seldom  turn  out  well.  A  young  poet 
should  have  a  great  deal  which  he  can  afford  to  throw  away  as 
he  gets  older."1 

Although  Tennyson's  father  died  in  1831,  he 
remained  with  the  family  at  Somersby  Eectory  until 
1837,  making  occasional  visits  elsewhere,  to  Mable- 
thorpe  on  the  bleak  Lincolnshire  coast,  to  London, 
and  once  crossing  the  sea  to  Holland  for  a  journey  up 
the  Ehine  to  Cologne  and  Bonn.  It  was  a  tumultuous 
period  in  Continental  no  less  than  in  English  politics ; 
and  though  Tennyson  welcomed  the  Reform  move- 
ment at  home,  he  was  in  some  trepidation  lest  it 
might  open  the  floodgates  of  democracy  upon  the 
foundations  of  ancient  institutions.  "  The  instigating 
spirit  of  Reform,"  he  wrote,  "will  bring  on  the  con- 
fiscation of  Church  property,  and  may  be  the  downfall 
of  the  Church  altogether;  but  the  existence  of  the 
sect  of  St.  Simonists  in  France  is  at  once  a  proof  of 
the  immense  mass  of  evil  that  is  extant  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  a  focus  which  gathers  all  its 
rays." 2  His  hope  of  never  seeing  "  St.  Simon  in  the 
Church  of  Christ"  has  at  any  rate  been  amply  ful- 
filled; and  the  mere  apprehension  shows  that  he  had 
not  yet,  naturally,  measured  the  difference  between  a 
religion  and  a  scientific  philosophy,  or  the  former's  in- 
calculable superiority  in  the  domain  of  things  spiritual. 
In  religion,  as  in  politics,  Tennyson's  convictions  gradu- 
ally settled  down  into  a  hopeful  optimism,  occasionally 
shaken  by  fits  of  splenetic  doubt  and  of  discomfiture 
at  the  spectacle  of  human  errors  and  misery.  He 
believed  in  the  remote  eventual  perfectibility  of  creeds 
and  also  of  constitutions ;  but  about  this  time  the 
1  Memoir.  2  Ibid. 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  29 

vanward  clouds  were  gathering  on  the  political  horizon, 
and  he  was  never  without  some  fear  lest  society  might 
be  caught  unprepared  in  some  sudden  storm : — 

"  Slowly  comes  a  hungry  people,  as  a  lion,  creeping  nigher, 
Glares  at  one  that  nods  and  winks  behind  a  slowly-dying 

fire." 

This  habit  of  cautious  moderation  and  profound 
distrust  of  popular  impatience,  the  dislike  of  excess 
or  audacity  in  opinion  which  belongs  to  the  contem- 
plative artist,  possessed  Tennyson  from  youth  to  age, 
and  occasionally  lowered  the  temperature  of  his  verse. 
Yet  Tennyson,  like  Burke,  had  great  confidence  in 
the  common  -  sense  and  inbred  good  -  nature  of  the 
English  people.  Stagnation,  he  once  said,  is  more 
dangerous  than  revolution.  As  he  was  throughout 
consistently  the  poet  of  the  via  media  in  politics,  the 
dignified  constitutional  Laureate,  so  he  was  spared 
the  changes  that  passed  over  the  opinions  of  Words- 
worth, Southey,  and  Coleridge,  who  were  Radicals 
in  their  youth,  and  declined  into  elderly  Tories.  The 
temper  of  the  times  affected  his  poetry  in  a  contrary 
way;  for  his  ardour  rather  increased  with  his  age. 
He  attained  manhood  in  the  middle  of  the  calm  period 
that  followed  the  long,  tumultuous  years  when  all 
Europe  was  one  vast  battlefield,  when  the  ardent 
spirits  of  Byron  and  Shelley  had  been  fired  by  the  fierce 
rallying  of  the  European  nations  against  Napoleon. 
It  was  the  Crimean  War,  twenty  years  later,  that  first 
brought  out  Tennyson  upon  the  battlefield ;  while  at 
home  the  subsidence  of  violent  Radicalism  encouraged 
his  Liberal  attitude  toward  internal  politics. 

In  the  autumn  of  1833  came  the  news  that  Arthur 
Hallam,  his  dearest  friend,  who  had  been  engaged  to 


30  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Emily  Tennyson,  had  died  suddenly  at  Vienna,  his 
last  letter  to  Tennyson  being  dated  a  week  before 
his  death.  Arthur  Hallam  may  be  counted  among 
those  men  whom  the  unanimous  consent  of  all  their 
fellows  marks  out  for  high  future  distinction,  and 
whose  brilliant  opening  upon  life,  closed  abruptly  by 
early  death,  invests  their  memory  with  a  kind  of 
romance,  explaining  and  almost  justifying  the  antique 
conception  of  Fate  and  divine  envy.  Tennyson's 
heart  was  pierced  with  bitter  sorrow,  and  filled  with  a 
sense  of  life's  dreary  insignificance.  He  wrote  the 
first  sections  of  his  famous  elegy  upon  his  friend,  and 
began  that  poem,  The  Two  Voices,  which  takes  up 
again  the  ancient  strain  of  mortal  man  wrestling  with 
the  temptation  to  despair,  when  irremediable  misfor- 
tune seems  to  render  life  nothing  worth,  a  momentary 
existence  destined  to  vanish  into  the  cold  oblivion 
that  hides  so  many  generations  of  the  past. 

The  Memorial  poem  underwent  many  years  of  incu- 
bation. In  the  meantime  Tennyson's  mind  was  also 
on  other  poetic  subjects.  Sir  Henry  Taylor  published 
in  1834  his  drama  of  Philip  van  Artevelde,  with  a 
preface  containing  the  author's  views  upon  modern 
poetry  in  general,  and  some  criticisms  upon  Byron 
and  Shelley  in  particular.  The  essence  of  his  dis- 
sertation was  that  "poetry  is  Reason  self-sublimed," 
that  Byron's  verse  was  too  unreasonably  passionate, 
the  product  of  personal  vanity  unbridled  by  sober 
sense  and  study ;  and  that  Shelley  let  his  fancy  run 
riot  in  melodious  rhapsodies.  It  was  the  somewhat 
austere  judgment  of  a  cultured  intellect  upon  the 
romantic  revival,  which  was  representing  the  demand 
for  liberty  and  a  wider  range  of  ideas  in  art,  as  the 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  31 

Liberal  movement  did  in  politics,  among  the  poets 
whom  Taylor  designated  as  the  Phantastic  school. 
Tennyson's  observation  upon  these  criticisms  is  just 
and  far-seeing : — 

"  I  close  with  Taylor  in  most  that  he  says  of  modern  poetry, 
though  it  may  be  that  he  does  not  take  sufficiently  into  con- 
sideration the  peculiar  strength  evolved  by  such  writers  as 
Byron  and  Shelley,  who,  however  mistaken  they  may  be,  did 
yet  give  the  world  another  heart  and  new  pulses,  and  so  we 
are  kept  going.  Blessed  be  those  who  grease  the  wheels 
of  the  old  world,  insomuch  that  to  move  on  is  better  than 
standing  still." l 

No  man,  as  we  know,  was  less  disposed  than 
Tennyson  to  undervalue  intellectual  serenity  or 
rhythmic  perfection ;  yet  he  saw  that  Byron,  with 
the  fiery  impetus  of  his  careless  verse,  and  Shelley, 
with  his  strong-winged  flights  into  the  realms  of 
phantasy,  were  men  of  daring  genius  who  had  quick- 
ened the  pace  and  widened  the  imaginative  range  of 
English  poetry. 

During  these  years  Tennyson  was  living  in  retire- 
ment at  Somersby.  His  correspondence,  then  and 
always,  appears  to  have  been  so  rare  and  fitful  that  it 
creates  a  serious  difficulty  for  the  ordinary  biographer, 
who  misses  the  connected  series  of  letters  that  provide 
so  important  and  interesting  a  clue  to  be  followed  in 
tracing  the  incidents,  the  opinion  on  passing  events, 
the  interchange  of  literary  and  political  impressions, 
in  the  lives  of  illustrious  or  notable  men.  For  paucity 
of  correspondence  Tennyson  is  indeed  singular  among 
modern  English  poets.  Cowper,  Scott,  and  Byron 
stand  in  the  foremost  rank  of  our  letter-writers,  and 
their  correspondence  is  in  volumes ;  while  Matthew 
1  Memoir. 


32  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Arnold  has  actually  predicted  that  Shelley's  letters 
might  survive  his  poems.  Coleridge's  familiar  letters 
are  amusing,  pathetic,  and  reflective,  full  of  a  kind 
of  divine  simplicity ;  he  is  alternately  indignant  and 
remorseful;  he  soars  to  themes  transcendent,  and 
sinks  anon  to  the  confession  of  his  errors  and  embarrass- 
ments. Wordsworth's  letters  contain  rural  scenery 
and  lofty  moral  sentiment.  They  all  belonged  to  the 
rapidly  diminishing  class  of  eminent  men  who  have 
freely  poured  their  real  sentiments  and  thoughts  out  of 
their  brain  into  correspondence  with  friends,  giving 
their  best  without  keeping  back  their  worst,  so  that 
we  can  follow  the  stages  of  their  lives  and  thoughts ; 
and  the  letters  thus  preserve  for  us  the  clear-cut 
stamp  of  their  individuality.  The  occasional  letters  of 
Tennyson  given  in  the  Memoirs  are  characteristic 
and  entertaining,  thrown  off  usually  in  the  light 
play  of  wit  and  good-humour ;  but  for  early  glimpses 
of  him  we  have  to  rely  mainly  upon  the  letters  or 
reminiscences  of  his  friends.  In  1835  he  was  with 
the  Speddings  in  the  Lake  country,  where  he  met 
Hartley  Coleridge,  who,  "  after  the  fourth  bottom  of 
gin,  deliberately  thanked  Heaven  for  having  brought 
them  acquainted," l  and  wrote  a  sonnet  in  celebration 
thereof.  A  visit  to  "Wordsworth  at  Rydal  Mount 
he  would  not  then  be  persuaded  to  undertake,  though 
the  Laureate  of  the  day  and  his  successor  did  come 
together  at  a  dinner  party  a  few  years  later.  Mr. 
Aubrey  de  Vere  has  described  the  meeting ; 2  and  he 
has  told  us  that  Wordsworth  soon  afterwards  wrote 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend  that  Tennyson  was  "  decidedly 
the  first  of  our  living  poets."  In  connection  with 
1  Memoir.  2  Ibid. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  33 

this  incident  Mr.  de  Vere  is  reminded  of  a  con- 
versation with  Tennyson,  who  was  enthusiastic  over 
the  songs  of  Burns — "You  forget,  for  their  sake, 
those  stupid  things,  his  serious  pieces."  The  same 
day  Mr.  de  Vere  met  Wordsworth,  who  praised  Burns 
even  more  vehemently  than  Tennyson  had  done,  but 
ended — "  Of  course,  I  refer  to  his  serious  efforts,  those 
foolish  little  amatory  songs  of  his  one  has  to  forget." 

After  1837  the  Tennyson  family  changed  their  resid- 
ence more  than  once,  first  migrating  from  Somersby  to 
High  Beech  in  Epping  Forest,  and  thence  in  1840  to 
Tunbridge  Wells.  Tennyson  made  various  excursions 
about  England ;  and  at  Warwick  he  met  again  Fitz- 
gerald, who  had  been  with  him  in  the  Lake  country, 
when  they  visited  together  Kenilworth  and  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  where  Tennyson,  seized  with  enthusiasm, 
wrote  his  name  among  those  scribbled  all  over  the  room 
in  which  Shakespeare  was  born — "  a  little  ashamed  of 
it  afterwards."  He  came  by  Coventry  to  London, 
and  composed  Godiva,  of  which  Charles  Sumner,  the 
American,  wrote  to  Monckton  Milnes  that  it  was 
"  unequalled  as  a  narrative  in  verse  " ;  he  also  went  to 
Bolton  Abbey  and  North  Wales,  leading  a  tranquil  and 
contemplative  life  in  a  period  of  political  and  ecclesias- 
tical agitation,  sedulously  husbanding  his  powers, 
meditating  on  the  problems  of  existence,  and  collecting 
impressions  in  his  journeys  about  England.  He  was  far 
from  being  indifferent  to  current  politics  or  theological 
controversies ;  he  took  a  close  interest  in  the  Oxford 
Movement ;  nor  did  he  make  light  of  the  grievances 
and  demonstrations  of  the  Chartists.  Yet  his  attitude 
seems  to  have  been  that  of  the  philosophic  spectator 
who  surveys  from  a  height  the  field  of  action ;  he  did 

0 


34  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

not  fling  himself  into  the  fighting  line,  like  Byron  or 
Shelley,  whose  poetry  glows  with  the  fiery  enthusiasm 
of  combatants  in  the  strife  over  political  or  religious 
causes  and  ideas,  or  like  Coleridge,  who  declared  that 
all  the  social  evils  of  his  day  arose  from  a  false  and 
godless  empiricism,  and  anxiously  expounded  to  Lord 
Liverpool  the  essential  connection  between  speculative 
philosophy  and  practical  politics.1  The  two  short 
poems  that  were  suggested  (we  are  told)  by  the 
Reform  agitation  are  in  a  tone  of  moderate  con- 
servatism :  he  praises  the  freedom  that  slowly 
broadens  down  from  precedent  to  precedent ;  he 
despises  the  "  falsehood  of  extremes  " ;  and  just  as 
in  Locksley  Hall  may  be  noticed  a  listening  fear 
of  mob  rule,  so  in  his  poem  Love  thou  thy  Land,  he 
is  a  cautious  Liberal,  ready  to  do  much  for  the  people, 
but  very  little  by  the  people — 

"  But  pamper  not  a  hasty  time, 
Nor  feed  with  crude  imaginings 
The  herd,  wild  hearts  and  feeble  wings, 
That  every  sophister  can  lime  " — 

and  his  abhorrence  of  precipitate  politics  comes  out  in 
almost  every  allusion  to  France. 

In  his  religious  speculations  he  ponders  over  the 
question  why  God  has  created  souls,  knowing  that 
they  would  sin  and  suffer,  and  finds  it  unanswerable 
except  in  that  firm  hope  of  universal  good  as  the 
outcome,  which  is  the  reasoned  conclusion  of  those 
who  find  the  design  of  human  life  in  this  world  unin- 
telligible, unless  another  world  is  brought  in  to  redress 
the  balance,  and  which  is  thus  the  mainspring  and 
support  of  belief  in  a  future  existence.  There  are 
1  See  a  wonderful  letter  in  Lord  Liverpool's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  302. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  35 

passages  in  the  letters  written  about  this  time  to 
Miss  Emily  Sellwood,  during  the  long  engagement 
that  preceded  their  marriage,  that  indicate  the  bent 
of  his  mind  toward  philosophic  questions,  with  fre- 
quent signs  of  that  half-conscious  fellow-feeling  with 
natural  things,  the  "dim,  mystic  sympathies  with 
tree  and  hill  reaching  far  back  into  childhood,"  that 
sense  of  life  in  all  sound  and  motion,  whereby  poetry 
is  drawn  upward,  by  degrees  and  instinctively,  into 
the  region  of  the  higher  Pantheism.  "Sculpture," 
he  writes,  "is  particularly  good  for  the  mind;  there 
is  a  height  and  divine  stillness  about  it  which  preaches 
peace  to  our  stormy  passions." 1  Nor  has  any  English 
poet  availed  himself  more  skilfully  of  a  language  that 
is  rich  in  metaphors  consisting  of  words  that  so  far 
retain  their  primary  meaning  as  to  suggest  a  picture 
while  they  convey  a  thought. 

The  preservation  of  the  rough  drafts  and  rejected 
versions  of  passages  and  lines  in  poems  of  high  finish, 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  artist  at  work,  may  not 
be  altogether  fair  to  him,  and  the  practice  in  some 
recent  editions  of  giving'  them  in  footnotes  is  rather 
distracting  to  those  readers  who  enjoy  a  fine  picture 
without  asking  how  the  colours  are  mixed.  And 
when  each  page  of  fine  verse  is  also  garnished  with 
references,  with  minute  explanations  of  the  most 
familiar  allusion,  and  with  parallel  quotations  from 
other  standard  poets,  the  worried  reader  is  painfully 
reminded  of  his  early  school-books.  Tennyson's 
poems  have  never  yet  been  footnoted  in  this  fashion, 
although  110  poet  has  corrected  or  revised  more 
diligently;  but  the  successive  editions,  which  bear 
1  Memoir. 


36  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

witness  to  his  alterations,  have  been  studiously  com- 
pared more  than  once.  To  students  of  method,  to 
the  fellow  craftsman,  and  to  the  literary  virtuoso, 
the  variant  readings  may  often  be  of  substantial 
interest  for  the  light  they  throw  on  the  tendencies 
and  predilections  of  taste  which  are  the  formative 
influences  upon  style  in  prose  or  poetry.  It  is  from 
such  materials  that  one  can  follow  the  processes  of 
Tennyson's  composition,  the  forming  and  maturing 
of  his  style,  the  fastidious  discrimination  which 
dictated  his  rejection  of  any  work  that  either  did 
not  throughout  satisfy  a  high  standard,  or  else  marred 
a  poem's  symmetrical  proportion  by  superfluity,  over- 
weight, or  the  undue  predominance  of  some  note  in 
the  general  harmony.  One  may  regret  that  some 
fine  stanzas  or  lines  should  have  been  thus  expunged, 
yet  the  impartial  critic  would  probably  confirm  the 
decision  in  every  instance.  He  acted,  as  we  perceive, 
inexorably  upon  his  rule  that  the  artist  is  known  by 
his  self-limitation,  feeling  certain,  as  he  once  said, 
that  "if  I  mean  to  make  any  mark  in  the  world,  it 
must  be  by  shortness,  for  the  men  before  me  had  been 
so  diffuse."  Only  the  concise  and  perfect  work,  he 
thought  at  this  time,  would  last;  and  "hundreds  of 
verses  were  blown  up  the  chimney  with  his  pipe 
smoke,  or  were  written  down  and  thrown  into  the 
fire  as  not  being  perfect  enough."1  Not  many  poems 
could  have  spared  the  four  stanzas  with  which  the 
"  Dream  of  Fair  Women  "  originally  began,  and  which 
E.  FitzGerald  quotes  in  an  early  letter  as  in  Tennyson's 
"  best  style,  no  fretful  epithet,  not  a  word  too  much." 
It  opens  thus : — 

1  Memoir. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  37 

"  As  when  a  man  that  sails  in  a  balloon, 

Down-looking  sees  the  solid  shining  ground 
Stream  from  beneath  him  in  the  broad  blue  noon, 
Tilth,  hamlet,  mead,  and  mound  : 

So,  lifted  high,  the  poet  at  his  will 

Lets  the  great  world  flit  from  him,  seeing  all, 

Higher,  thro'  secret  splendours  mounting  still, 
Self-poised,  nor  fears  to  fall." 

Yet  one  can  see  that  the  simile  is  unnecessary,  and  to 
a  certain  degree  out  of  line  with  the  general  conception 
of  a  vision  that  passes  in  the  night.  He  would  strike 
out  stanzas  because  they  made  a  poem  too  "long- 
backed";  and  he  resolutely  condemned  to  excision 
from  the  original  Palace  of  Art  some  excellent  verses, 
merely  to  give  the  composition  even  balance,  and 
to  trim  the  poem  like  a  boat.  This  poem,  in  fact, 
was  in  a  large  part  rewritten,  for  Tennyson  evidently 
thought  that  too  much  brilliancy  and  opulence  in  the 
decoration  of  his  Palace  might  run  into  gorgeousness. 
He  withdrew  two  or  three  such  stanzas  as  this : — 

"  With  piles  of  flavorous  fruit  in  basket-twine 

Of  gold,  upheaped,  crushing  down 
Musk-scented  blooms,  all  taste,  grape,  gourd,  or  pine 
In  bunch,  or  single  grown." 

And  this  other  stanza  may  have  been  omitted 
because  the  didactic  or  scientific  note  is  rather  too 
prominent : — 

"  All  nature  widens  upward.     Evermore 

The  simpler  essence  lower  lies, 
More  complex  is  more  perfect,  owning  more 
Discourse,  more  widely  wise." 

At  any  rate,  the  preservation  of  these  rejections  (in  the 
Memoir]  serves  to  illustrate  the  gradual  development 


38  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

of  consummate  technique ;  nor  has  it  in  this  instance 
damaged  the  artist,  for  we  may  rank  Tennyson  among 
the  very  few  poets  whose  reputation  would  rather  gain 
than  suffer  by  the  posthumous  appearance  of  pieces  that 
the  author  had  deliberately  withheld  or  withdrawn. 

From  1833  the  publication  of  more  poetry  was  sus- 
pended, though  not  the  writing  of  it.  In  one  of 
E.  FitzGerald's  letters  (March  1842)  we  have  the 
following  passage : — 

"  Poor  Tennyson  has  got  home  some  of  his  proof-sheets,  and 
now  that  his  verses  are  in  hard  print,  he  thinks  them  detest- 
able. There  is  much  I  had  always  told  him  of — his  great  fault 
of  being  too  full  and  complicated — which  he  now  sees,  or 
fancies  he  sees,  and  wishes  he  had  never  been  persuaded  to 
print.  But  with  all  his  faults,  he  will  publish  such  a  volume 
as  has  never  been  published  since  the  time  of  Keats,  and 
which,  once  published,  will  never  be  suffered  to  die.  This  is 
my  prophesy,  for  I  live  before  Posterity." 

And  indeed  the  fallow  leisure  of  this  period  bore  an 
ample  harvest ;  for  after  an  interval  of  ten  years  the 
full  growth  and  range  of  his  genius  came  out  in  the 
two  volumes  of  1842.  The  first  of  these  contained 
a  selection  from  the  poems  of  1830,  with  others,  much 
altered,  which  had  appeared  in  1832,  and  several  new 
pieces.  In  the  second  volume  all  was  entirely  new, 
except  three  stanzas  of  "  The  Day  Dream." 

"  This  decade,"  writes  his  biographer,  "  wrought  a  marvel- 
lous abatement  of  my  father's  real  fault — the  tendency,  arising 
from  the  fulness  of  mind  which  had  not  yet  learned  to  master 
its  resources  freely,  to  overcrowd  his  compositions  with  imagery, 
to  which  may  be  added  over-indulgence  in  the  luxury  of  the 
senses." l 

The    criticism    is    just,    for    these   new    poems    did 
1  Memoir. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  39 

undoubtedly  attest  the  poet's  rapid  development  of 
mind  and  methods,  the  expansion  of  his  range  of 
thought,  his  increasing  command  over  the  musical 
instrument,  and  the  admirable  vigour  and  beauty 
that  his  composition  was  now  disclosing.  He  had 
the  singular  advantage,  rarely  enjoyed  so  early  in 
a  poetic  career,  of  being  surrounded  by  enthusiastic 
friends  who  were  also  very  competent  judges  of  his 
work,  whose  unanimous  verdict  must  have  given  his 
heart  real  confidence;  so  that  the  few  spurts  of  cold 
water  thrown  on  him  by  professional  reviewers  no 
longer  troubled  him  seriously.  The  darts  of  such 
enemies  might  hardly  reach  or  wound  one  round 
whom  such  men  as  Hallam,  James  Spedding,  Edward 
FitzGerald,  the  two  Lushingtons,  Blakesley,  and  Julius 
Hare  rallied  eagerly.  Wordsworth,  who  at  first  had 
been  slow  to  appreciate,  having  afterwards  listened  to 
two  poems  recited  by  Aubrey  de  Vere,  did  "acknow- 
ledge that  they  were  very  noble  in  thought,  with  a 
diction  singularly  stately."  Even  Carlyle,  who  had 
implored  the  poet  to  stick  to  prose,  was  vanquished, 
and  wrote  (1842)  a  letter  so  vividly  characteristic  as  to 
justify,  or  excuse,  another  quotation  from  the  Memoir : — 

"DEAR  TENNYSON, — Wherever  this  find  you,  may  it  find 
you  well,  may  it  come  as  a  friendly  greeting  to  you.  I  have 
just  been  reading  your  Poems  ;  I  have  read  certain  of  them 
over  again,  and  mean  to  read  them  over  and  over  till  they 
become  my  poems  ;  this  fact,  with  the  inferences  that  lie  in  it, 
is  of  such  emphasis  in  me,  I  cannot  keep  it  to  myself,  but  must 
needs  acquaint  you  too  with  it.  If  you  knew  what  my  relation 
has  been  to  the  thing  call'd  English  '  Poetry '  for  many  years 
back,  you  would  think  such  fact  almost  surprising !  Truly 
it  is  long  since  in  any  English  Book,  Poetry  or  Prose,  I  have 
felt  the  pulse  of  a  real  man's  heart  as  I  do  in  this  same. 


40  TENNYSON.  [CHAP. 

"  I  know  you  cannot  read  German  :  the  more  interesting  is 
it  to  trace  in  your  '  Summer  Oak '  a  beautiful  kindred  to  some- 
thing that  is  best  in  Goethe  ;  I  mean  his  '  Miillerinn '  (Miller's 
daughter)  chiefly,  with  whom  the  very  Mill-dam  gets  in  7ove  ; 
tho'  she  proves  a  flirt  after  all  and  the  thing  eads  in 
satirical  lines  !  Very  strangely  too  in  the  '  Vision  of  Sin '  I 
am  reminded  of  my  friend  Jean  Paul.  This  is  not  babble, 
it  is  speech ;  true  deposition  of  a  volunteer  witness.  And 
so  I  say  let  us  all  rejoice  somewhat.  And  so  let  us  all  smite 
rhythmically,  all  in  concert,  'the  sounding  furrows' ;  and  sail 
forward  with  new  cheer,  '  beyond  the  sunset,3  whither  we  are 
bound." 

The  allusion  at  the  end  of  his  letter  is,  of  course, 
to  Tennyson's  Ulysses,  which  Carlyle  quoted  again 
(1843)  in  Past  and  Present.  He  is  recalling  the  con- 
cluding lines  of  this  grand  monologue,  where  the  old 
warrior,  who  embodies  the  spirit  of  heroic  adventure 
in  the  primitive  world,  and  whose  manhood  has  been 
spent  in  twenty  years'  war  and  travel,  breaks  away 
from  the  monotonous  inactivity  of  life  on  a  small 
island,  and  fares  forth  again  as  a  sea-rover.  The 
Odyssey  and  the  Iliad  are  the  unsurpassed  models  of 
all  true  epical  narrative;  the  poet  chooses  certain 
incidents  and  actions  that  bring  out  character,  that 
unite  to  frame  a  coherent  picture  of  men  and  their 
times ;  and  when  the  plot  has  been  worked  out 
to  its  denouement,  the  story  in  each  poem,  as  also 
in  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  drops  naturally  to  a 
quiet  ending;  to  go  further  would  have  been  a 
breach  of  the  poem's  unity.  Yet  the  stamp  of 
character  is  so  firmly  set  upon  Ulysses  that  the  mind 
of  man  has  never  since  been  content  with  leaving 
him  to  a  home-keeping  old  age  in  Ithaca;  and  one 
would  almost  as  soon  believe  that  Napoleon  might 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  41 

have  settled  down  placidly  in  Elba  or  St.  Helena. 
Dante  takes  up,  in  the  spirit  of  the  age  that  produced 
Marco  Polo,  the  post-Homeric  legend  of  Ulysses  sailing 
from  Circe's  island,  near  Gaeta,  out  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean westward  into  the  "unpeopled  world  "of  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  impelled  by  an  ardent  desire  to 
explore  the  unseen  and  unknown.1  On  the  other  hand, 
Tennyson's  hero  has  reached  home,  and  has  given  family 
life  a  fair  trial,  but  he  finds  it  so  dull  that  he  is  soon 
driven  by  sheer  ennui  to  his  ship,  purposing  to  sail 
beyond  the  sunset  and  return  no  more.  He  exhorts 
his  old  comrades,  as  in  Dante,  to  follow  knowledge 
and  make  the  most  of  the  short  life  remaining  to  them 
all.  As  a  point  of  minor  criticism,  it  may  here  be 
noticed  that  in  taking  Ithaca  instead  of  Circe's  island 
as  the  place  of  departure  on  this  final  voyage,  the 
English  poet  may  have  forgotten  that  before  the 
Homeric  Ulysses  landed  in  Ithaca,  a  solitary  man, 
every  one  of  his  companions  with  whom  he  left  Troy 
had  perished  by  sea  or  land  during  the  long  wandering. 
But  fidelity  to  the  original  tradition  is  of  no  account 
in  a  poem  that  is  independent  of  time  and  place.  Our 
poet  may  have  felt  that  he  was  touching  a  chord  in 
the  heart  of  the  restless  Englishman,  who  is  seldom 
content  with  leisurely  ease  after  many  years  of  working 
and  wandering  abroad — 

1  This  legend  is  partly  confirmed,  in  a  curious  way,  by  care- 
ful recent  investigations  into  the  Mediterranean  geography  of 
the  Odyssey,  which  have  located,  with  much  probability,  the 
island  of  Calypso,  the  daughter  of  Atlas,  on  the  north-west 
coast  of  Africa,  near  the  Strait  of  Gibraltar.  It  is  noticed, 
among  other  indications,  that  Calypso  enjoined  Ulysses  to  keep 
the  north  star  always  on  his  left  in  sailing  back  toward  Ithaca, 
and  that  he  followed  this  eastward  course  for  eighteen  days. 


42  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"  The  long  mechanic  pacings  to  and  fro, 
The  set  gray  life,  and  apathetic  end," 

are  not  for  men  of  this  temper.  Whether  they  are 
chiefs  of  a  petty  Greek  island,  or  citizens  of  a  vast 
empire  whose  frontiers  are  constantly  advancing,  for 
them  it  is  true  that 

"  All  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro' 
Gleams  that  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 
For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move  ; " 

and  Ulysses  is  the  primeval  type  of  the  indefatigable 
rover  for  whom  the  Juventus  Mundi  provided  un- 
limited regions  of  adventure,  but  whose  occupation 
will  soon  be  gone  when  the  uttermost  corners  of  the 
earth  shall  have  been  explored.  Ancient  myth, 
mediaeval  epic,  popular  ballads,  retain  and  hand  down 
the  figures  of  such  men,  as  they  were  stamped  on  the 
imagination  of  the  times ;  and  Tennyson's  poem  gives 
us  the  persistent  character,  blended  with  and  accorded 
to  modern  feelings. 

Ulysses  is  perhaps  the  finest,  in  purity  of  com- 
position and  in  the  drawing  of  character,  among 
Tennyson's  dramatic  monologues.  Of  his  other 
classical  studies,  Tithonus  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
conceptions  of  the  mythologic  Greek  mind  reset  in 
harmonious  verse — a  fable  that  may  be  interpreted 
variously ;  whether  of  the  desolate  sadness  that  would 
be  the  penalty  of  surviving,  the  mere  relic  of  a  man, 
into  a  strange  and  distant  generation — 

"  A  white-hair'd  shadow  roaming  like  a  dream," 

or  as  a  parable  upon  the  melancholy  futility  and 
disappointment  that  may  follow  the  coupling  of 
blooming  youth  with  extreme  old  age. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  43 

"  How  can  my  nature  longer  mix  with  thine  ? 
Coldly  thy  rosy  shadows  bathe  me,  cold 
Are  all  thy  lights,  and  cold  my  wrinkled  feet." l 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  "  the  passionless  bride,  divine 
Tranquillity,"  whom  Tennyson's  Lucretius,  wrestling 
with  the  satyr,  vainly  woos  on  earth,  preferring  at 
last  to  seek  her  by  death  in  the  high  Roman  fashion, 
and  trusting  that 

"  My  golden  work  in  which  I  told  a  truth 
That  stays  the  rolling  Ixionian  wheel, 
And  numbs  the  Fury's  ringlet-snake,  and  plucks 
The  mortal  soul  from  out  immortal  hell, 
Shall  stand," 

as  assuredly  it  has  stood  and  will  endure.  In  these 
dramatic  studies  from  the  antique  the  single  Roman 
figure  is  Lucretius,  the  only  Latin  poet  who  boldly 
grappled  with  those  profound  religious  and  philoso- 
phical enigmas  that  were  always  perplexing  Tennyson's 
meditations,  and  whose  conclusions  must  have  been  no 
less  deeply  interesting  to  him  because  they  were  so 
different  from  his  own. 

The  march  of  blank  verse,  flowing  onward  with  its 
sonorous  rhythm,  is  well  suited  to  these  monologues. 
Tennyson,  who  believed  that  "Keats,  with  his  high 
spiritual  vision,  would  have  been  had  he  lived, 
the  greatest  of  us  all,"2  observed  also  that  his 
blank  verse  lacked  originality  of  movement.  It 

1  Compare  the  Spanish  epigram  011  a  rainy  dawn — 

' '  Quando  sale  la  Aurora 

Sale  llorada, 
Pobrecita,  que  noche 
Eabra  pasada  ! " 

2  Memoir. 


44  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

is  true  that  Keats,  who  died  before  his  metrical 
skill  could  be  perfected,  followed  evidently  the 
Miltonic  construction ;  nevertheless,  he  stands  in  the 
foremost  rank,  if  not  first,  among  the  nineteenth- 
century  poets  who  may  be  said  to  have  refreshed 
blank  verse  by  a  new  exhibition  of  its  resources  for 
varied  harmonies.  And  we  may  recognise  an  affinity, 
in  cadence  and  rich  colouring,  between  the  first  part  of 
Hyperion  and  Tennyson's  compositions  in  the  same 
metre,  whenever  he  takes  for  his  theme  some  legend 
of  antiquity.  We  may  reckon,  moreover,  Keats  as 
Tennyson's  forerunner  in  the  romantic  handling  of 
classic  subjects,  with  a  fanciful  freedom  not  restrained 
by  the  scholarship  that  kept  Tennyson  closer  to  his 
models,  and  made  him  aim  at  preserving  more  closely 
the  thought,  to  the  extent  of  occasionally  reproducing 
the  very  form  and  translating  the  language,  of  the 
Greek  originals.1  Both  poets  had  the  gift  of  intense 
susceptibility  to  the  beauties  of  Nature,  and  with  both 
of  them  the  primitive  myths  were  coloured  by  the 
magic  of  romance.  But  Tennyson's  art  shows  more 
plainly  the  influence  of  a  time  that  delights  in  that 
precision  of  details  which  the  eighteenth  -  century 
poetry  had  avoided,  preferring  elegant  generalities 
and  elevated  sentiments  in  polished  verse.  His  work 
is  essentially  picturesque,  in  the  sense  that  he  could 
use  words  as  the  painter  uses  his  brush  for  conveying 
the  impression  of  a  scene's  true  outline  and  colour ;  he 
can  venture  upon  accurate  description.  The  subjoined 
fragment,  written  on  revisiting  Mablethorpe,  contains 
the  quintessence  of  his  descriptive  style ;  the  last  three 
lines  are  sheer  landscape  painting. 

1  "Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy." 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  45 

"  Here  often  when  a  child  I  lay  reclined  : 

I  took  delight  in  this  fair  strand  and  free  ; 
Here  stood  the  infant  Ilion  of  the  mind, 

And  here  the  Grecian  ships  all  seem'd  to  be. 
And  here  again  I  come,  and  only  find 

The  drain-cut  level  of  the  marshy  lea, 
Gray  sand-banks,  and  pale  sunsets,  dreary  wind, 

Dim  shores,  dense  rains,  and  heavy-clouded  sea." 

So  also  in  the  Palace  of  Art  the  desolate  soul  is 
likened  to 

"  A  still  salt  pool,  lock'd  in  with  bars  of  sand  ; 

Left  on  the  shore  ;  that  hears  all  night 
The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the  land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white." 

Here  every  word  is  like  a  stroke  of  the  painter's  brush, 
put  in  to  complete  the  sketch  and  to  round  off  the 
impression  ;  and  this,  as  has  been  already  observed,  is 
characteristic  of  all  Tennyson's  workmanship  ;  he  does 
not  give  the  effect  of  the  scene,  but  the  scene  itself. 
For  the  different  method  of  conveying  to  the  mind's 
eye  the  scene  through  its  effect,  we  may  compare 

"  In  such  a  night 

Stood  Dido  with  a  willow  in  her  hand 
Upon  the  wild  sea  banks,  and  waved  her  love 
To  come  again  to  Carthage." 

In  the  volumes  of  1842  one  remarkable  feature  of 
the  new  poems  is  the  diversity  of  subjects  and  motifs. 
The  second  volume  opens  with  the  Morte  d' Arthur, 
wherein  Tennyson  first  tried  his  art  upon  the  legends 
that  are  to  be  gathered  upon  the  shores  of  old 
romance,  enlarging  the  picture,  and  filling  up  his 
canvas  with  a  profusion  of  exquisite  detail,  the  sights 
and  the  sounds,  the  figures  of  the  king  and  his 


46  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

knights,  the  ruined  shrine,  the  lake  in  the  full  moon, 
the  clanging  of  Sir  Bedivere's  armour,  the  ripple 
of  tne  water  on  the  bank.  The  earliest  romances 
had  none  of  this  ornament;  they  relied  on  the 
energetic  simplicity  with  which  a  bard  might  relate 
what  was  said  and  done  in  some  tragic  emergency; 
their  interest  centred  in  the  acts  and  incidents  ;  they 
had  little  care  for  the  descriptive  setting  of  their 
narratives  in  landscape  or  supplementary  decoration ; 
their  religion  was  miraculous  and  almost  wholly  ex- 
ternal. Tennyson  retains  the  dramatic  situation, 
and  treats  it  in  a  manner  that  satisfies  the  modern 
sensibility  to  deeper  thoughts  and  suggestions,  to 
the  magic  of  scenery,  to  that  delight  in  bygone 
things  which  is  the  true  romantic  feeling  in  an 
age  when  enchanted  swords  and  fairy  queens  are  no 
longer  marvellous  realities,  and  can  only  be  preserved 
for  poetic  use  as  mystic  visions.  Arthur  and  his 
knights  have  fallen  in  their  last  battle;  but  the 
Round  Table  was  "an  image  of  the  mighty  world  "  in 
which  the  old  order  changes,  giving  place  to  new; 
they  have  lived  their  time  and  done  their  work ;  and 
so  the  legendary  king  vanishes,  uncertain  whither  he 
may  be  going,  into  some  restful  Elysium. 

One  feature  of  the  collection  in  this  volume  is  the 
variety  of  subject  and  character.  After  the  Morte 
d'Arthur,  the  last  scene  of  a  lost  epic,  come  two 
rustic  pastorals  of  the  present  day,  The  Gardener's 
Daughter  and  Dora;  the  latter  remarkable  for  its 
pathetic  simplicity,  without  one  superfluous  epithet 
or  streak  of  colour,  insomuch  that  Wordsworth  is 
recorded  to  have  thus  spoken  of  it  —  "Mr.  Tenny- 
son, I  have  been  endeavouring  all  my  life  to  write 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  47 

a  pastoral  like  your  Dora,  and  have  not  succeeded." 
And  FitzGerald  wrote  that  as  an  eclogue  it  came 
near  the  Book  of  Euth.  Wordsworth's  pastorals, 
though  of  the  highest  quality,  are  constructed 
differently  from  Tennyson's ;  he  tells  a  plain  story 
or  more  often  relates  an  incident,  for  the  purpose 
of  bringing  out  some  single  note  of  human  feeling, 
the  touch  of  nature  that  makes  us  all  akin,  and 
upon  this  he  moralises  reflectively.  Next  after  Dora 
follow  three  sketches  of  quiet  strolling  through  English 
fields,  Audley  Court,  Walking  to  the  Mail,  and  Edwin 
Morris.  The  mail  comes  in  sight,  "as  quaint  a  four- 
in-hand  as  you  shall  see — three  piebalds  and  a  roan." 
We  start  with  Edwin  Morris  and  his  friend  by  the 
lake,  to  hear 

"  The  soft  wind  blowing  over  meadowy  holms 

While  the  prime  swallow  dips  his  wing,  or  then 

While  the  gold-lily  blows,  and  overhead 

The  light  cloud  smoulders  on  the  summer  crag." 

All  these  poems  lap  us  in  the  caressing  air  of  rural 
England  at  its  best.  Turn  the  page,  and  before  us 
is  St.  Simeon  Stylites,  the  type  of  wild  Oriental 
asceticism,  praying  from  the  top  of  his  pillar  amid 
rain,  wind,  and  frost ;  "  from  scalp  to  sole  one  slough 
and  crust  of  sin," 

"  Battering  the  gates  of  heaven  with  storms  of  prayer." 

The  poet  has  leapt  back  out  of  English  fields  into  the 
Egyptian  desert.  From  this  picture  of  suicidal  misery 
and  fierce  mortification  of  the  senses  we  pass  abruptly 
to  the  idyllic  love  poem  of  the  Talking  Oak  in  an  old 


48  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

English  park ;  and  the  next  leap  is  again  still  further 
backward  into  the  primitive  world  of  Ulysses,  the 
hard-headed  fighting  man, 

" strong  in  will 

To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield." 

With  this  note  of  heroic  character  in  the  foretime 
struck  by  the  concluding  lines  of  Ulysses  we  again  turn 
over  a  leaf,  and  are  confronted  in  Locksley  Hall  by  the 
irresolute  figure  of  modern  youth,  depressed  and  be- 
wildered by  his  own  inability  to  face  the  bustling 
competition  of  ordinary  English  life,  disappointed  in 
love,  denouncing  a  shallow-hearted  cousin,  and  nursing 
a  momentary  impulse  to 

" wander  far  away, 

On  from  island  unto  island  at  the  gateways  of  the  day." 

Restlessness,  ennui,  impatience  of  humdrum  existence, 
set  him  dreaming  of  something  like  a  new  Odyssey. 
But  the  hero  of  Locksley  Hall  is  no  Ulysses;  the 
bonds  of  culture  and  comfort  are  too  strong  for  him  ; 
the  project  of  wild  adventure  is  abandoned  as  quickly  as 
it  is  formed ;  he  remains  to  console  himself  with  the 
march  of  mind  and  the  wonders  of  scientific  discovery. 
The  contrast  of  ancient  and  modern  character  and  cir- 
cumstance was  probably  unintentional ;  but  in  noticing 
it  we  may  take  into  account  that  while  the  Englishman 
had  been  crossed  in  love,  the  Ithacan  had  been  remark- 
ably successful  with  Circe  and  Calypso,  and  appears  to 
have  been  always  well  treated  by  women,  who  may 
be  overcome,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  by  stalwart 
perseverance.  The  great  and  lasting  success  of 
Locksley  Hall  shows  the  power  of  genius  in  presenting 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  49 

an  ordinary  situation  poetically;  how  it  can  kindle 
up  and  transform  common  emotions,  dealing  boldly 
with  the  facts  and  feelings  of  everyday  life.  As  a 
composition  it  has  great  original  merit :  the  even 
current  of  blank  verse  is  put  aside  for  a  swinging 
metre,  new  in  English  poetry,  with  rhymed  couplets, 
passionate  and  picturesque,  which  follow  one  another 
like  waves ;  each  of  them  running  directly  to  its 
point ;  and  the  long  nervous  lines  sustain  the  rise  and 
fall  of  varying  moods.  They  stand  now  almost  exactly 
as  they  were  written  originally,  with  one  correction 
that  greatly  improved  what  is  now  a  singularly 
powerful  line.1 

That  a  poem  which  is  steeped  in  the  quintessence  of 
modern  sentiment — an  invective  in  Rousseau's  vein 
against  a  corrupt  society — should  be  connected  by 
origin  with  the  early  poetry  of  the  Arabian  desert,  is 
a  notable  example  of  the  permanence  and  transmission 
of  forms.  We  know  from  the  Memoir  that  Tennyson 
took  his  idea  (he  said)  of  Locksley  Hall  from  the 
Moallakdt,  the  Suspended  poems,  composed  by  Arab 
bards  in  or  about  the  seventh  century  of  our  era,  and 
hung  up  in  the  Temple  at  Mecca.  They  are  on  different 
themes,  but  all  of  them  begin  with  what  is  called  the 
nastb,  a  melancholy  reflection  on  deserted  dwellings  or 
camping-grounds,  that  once  were  the  scene  of  love  and 
stolen  meetings.  Here  we  have  the  opening  prelude  of 
Locksley  Hall;  and  in  the  first  of  the  seven  poems 
is  to  be  found  the  allusion  to  the  Pleiades  with  its 
metaphor ;  while  other  resemblances  can  be  traced  in 

1  ' '  Let  the  peoples  spin  for  ever  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change  " 
(1842)  altered  to 

"  Let  the  great  world  spin  for  ever,"  etc. 
D 


50  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

the  mother's  worldly  counsel  to  her  daughter,  and  in 
the  ending  of  both  pieces  with  a  storm.1 

One  might  almost  regard  The  Two  Voices  as  con- 
tinuing in  a  deeper  philosophic  key  the  melancholy 
musing  of  Locksley  Hall,  and  the  two  poems  might 
then  be  labelled  "Dejection."  There  is  a  similar  dis- 
consolate protest  against  the  vanity  and  emptiness  of 
life ;  there  is  the  feeling  of  doubt  and  disillusion,  the 
sombre  self-examination ;  and  that  same  vague  longing 
for  the  battlefield  as  a  remedy  for  the  morbid  sensibility 
that  haunts  so  many  studious  men,  which  reappears 
later  in  Maud.  And  the  poem  ends  like  In  Memoriam, 
with  a  revival  of  faith  and  hope  under  the  influences 
of  calm  natural  beauty,  of  household  affections,  and 
the  placid  ways  of  ordinary  humanity.  It  is  a  soothing 
doctrine,  and  a  wholesome  medicine  for  the  moodiness 
and  ailments,  the  weariness  of  mere  brainwork,  that 
occasionally  disturb  a  sequestered  and  uneventful 
existence;  though  it  would  hardly  minister  to  more 

1  These  parallels  have  been  pointed  out  to  me  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyall,  to  whom  all  Arabic  poetry  is  familiar,  and  whose  own 
version  of  the  couplet  on  the  Pleiades  is  here  placed  side  by 
side  with  Tennyson's  stanza,  for  a  comparison  that  is  by  no 
means  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  Arabian.  It  may  be  observed 
that  the  metrical  arrangement  of  the  original  Arabic  verse,  by 
which  each  long  line  is  composed  of  two  hemistichs,  giving  a 
pause  in  the  middle,  and  each  couplet  is  complete  in  itself,  is 
not  unlike  the  movement  of  the  English  verse,  and  may  have 
suggested  it. 

Tennyson. 

"  Many  a  night  I  saw  the  Pleiades,  rising  through  the  mellow  shade, 
Glitter  like  a  swarm  of  fireflies  tangled  in  a  silver  braid." 

Imra-al-Kais. 

"  What  time  in  the  Eastern  heavens  the  Pleiades  clomb  the  sky 
Like  the  jewelled  clasps  of  a  girdle  aslant  on  a  woman's  waist." 


II.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  51 

perilous  mental  diseases,  or  relieve  the  perplexities  of 
Hamlet.  One  stanza  in  The  Two  Voices — 

" '  Consider  well,'  the  voice  replied, 
'  His  face,  that  two  hours  since  hath  died  ; 
Wilt  thou  find  passion,  pain  or  pride  ? '  " 

recalls  the  masculine  attitude  of  an  age  which,  though 
inferior  in  poetic  imagination,  was  perhaps  for  that 
very  reason  less  troubled  by  thick-coming  fancies — 

"  A  soul  supreme  in  each  hard  instance  tried, 
Above  all  pain,  all  passion,  and  all  pride, 
The  rage  of  power,  the  blast  of  public  breath, 
The  lust  of  lucre  and  the  dread  of  death."  1 

And  it  is  certainly  refreshing,  when  two  or  three  more 
pages  of  Tennyson's  volume  are  turned,  to  find  the 
spirit  of  undaunted  faith  and  courage  revived  in  the 
lofty  stanzas  of  Sir  Galahad,  where  the  rhymes  ring 
clear  like  strokes  on  a  bell — a  piece  of  consummate 
workmanship.  We  may  compare  the  somewhat  abject 
prostration  of  Stylites  with  the  vigorous  championship 
of  his  faith  by  the  knight-errant — 

"  My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 

My  tough  lance  thrusteth  sure  ; 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten, 
Because  my  heart  is  pure." 

He  stands  here  as  a  model  of  that  purity  and  trustful 
piety  which  belong  to  the  later  conceptions  of  chivalry, 
when  tales  of  enchantment  were  intermixed  with  the 
Christian  mysteries.  In  the  fragment  of  Lancelot 
and  Guinevere  we  have  the  tone  of  the  Eenaissance, 
a  picture  of  the  courteous  knight  and  his  lady  love 
set  in  a  framework  of  brilliant  English  scenery,  as  they 
ride  through  the  woods  in  the  springtide  of  the  year. 
1  Pope's  "  Epistle  to  the  Earl  of  Oxford." 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM 

FROM  1842  to  1845  the  sojourning  of  Tennyson  in 
various  parts  of  England  and  Ireland  can  be  traced 
from  his  letters,  which  mention,  however,  few  personal 
incidents,  and  allude  rarely  to  public  affairs.  One  of 
these  refers  to  a  trial  of  the  water  cure  at  Cheltenham ; 
and  in  a  letter  of  October  1844  to  F.  Tennyson, 
Fitzgerald  reports  Alfred  to  be  still  there,  "where 
he  has  been  sojourning  for  two  months,  but  he  never 
writes  me  a  word.  Hydropathy  has  done  its  worst: 
he  writes  the  names  of  his  friends  in  water."  At  this 
time  he  had  been  persuaded  by  one  Dr.  Allen  to  put  all 
his  capital  into  a  project  of  turning  out  wood-carving 
by  machinery.  By  this  whimsically  rash  investment  he 
lost  his  money,  a  very  serious  blow  to  his  prospects  of 
marriage ;  and  he  fell  ill  with  anxiety  and  vexation.1 

In  1845  Mr.  Hallam  had  drawn  Sir  Eobert  Peel's 
attention  to  Tennyson's  merits  and  slender  means, 
when  Peel  offered  a  small  grant  of  one  sum,  excusing 
his  inability  to  provide  more  at  that  time;  but 
Hallam  treated  this  as  inadequate.  Soon  after- 

1  FitzGerald  writes  (1845)— "Dr.  Allen  is  dead;  and  A.  T., 
having  a  life  insurance  and  policy  on  him,  will  now,  I  hope, 
retrieve  the  greater  part  of  his  fortune  again.  Apollo  certainly 
did  this  ;  shooting  one  of  his  swift  arrows  straight  at  the  heart 
of  the  doctor,  whose  perfectly  heartless  conduct  certainly 

upset  A.  T.'s  nerves." 
62 


CHAP,  m.]    THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM        53 

wards  Carlyle's  solemn  warning  to  Monckton  Milnes, 
who  had  already  been  moving  in  the  matter,  that 
his  eternal  salvation  would  depend  at  the  Day 
of  Judgment  on  his  ability  to  answer  the  question 
why  he  did  not  get  a  pension  for  Alfred  Tennyson, 
appears  to  have  been  effective,  for  in  1845  the 
annual  grant  of  .£200  was  communicated  to  him  by 
Sir  Robert  Peel  as  "a  mark  of  royal  favour  to  one 
who  had  devoted  to  worthy  objects  great  intellectual 
powers."  The  minister  was  balancing  the  claims  of 
Sheridan  Knowles,  who  was  aged  and  had  done  his 
work,  against  the  rising  genius,  when  Milnes  sent 
to  him  Locksley  Hall  and  Ulysses;  and  it  was  the 
reading  of  Ulysses  by  Milnes  to  Peel,  we  are  told, 
that  determined  the  recommendation,  which  was  made 
without  any  kind  of  direct  or  indirect  solicitation 
from  the  poet.  He  wrote  to  a  friend : — 

"  Something  in  that  word  '  pension '  sticks  in  my  gizzard  ; 
it  is  only  the  name,  and  perhaps  would  '  smell  sweeter '  by 
some  other.  I  feel  the  least  bit  possible  Miss  Martineauish 
about  it.  You  know  she  refused  one,  saying  she  '  should  be 
robbing  the  people,  who  did  not  make  laws  for  themselves '  : 
however,  that  is  nonsense.  ...  If  the  people  did  make  laws 
for  themselves,  if  these  things  went  by  universal  suffrage, 
what  literary  man  ever  would  get  a  lift  ?  it  being  notorious 
that  the  mass  of  Englishmen  have  as  much  notion  of  poetry  as 
I  of  fox-hunting." l 

Herein,  it  may  be  observed,  Tennyson  does  scant 
justice  to  the  taste  and  to  the  generosity  of  the 
English  people,  who  are  at  least  as  widely  sensitive  to 
fine  poetry  as  any  other  modern  nation,  which  is 
probably  one  reason  why  England  has  produced  so 
much  of  it.  Nor  has  an  original  genius,  of  strength 
1  Memoir. 


54  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  sincerity,  ever  had  cause  to  fear  the  test  of 
universal  suffrage,  if  his  themes  have  been,  as  with 
a  great  poet  they  always  are,  of  a  kind  that  are  large 
and  deep  enough  to  touch  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men :  since  no  other  art  can  compare  with  poetry  at  the 
highest  level  for  its  power  of  winning  popularity.  And 
this  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we  remember  that 
the  poet  of  modern  nations  uses  the  language  of  a  vast 
miscellaneous  multitude,  with  complex  tastes  and  in 
diverse  conditions  of  life ;  whereas  the  masters  of 
antique  poetry  had  for  their  audience  some  com- 
paratively small  community,  or  a  group  of  petty 
states  and  cities  allied  to  them  by  kinship,  in  mind 
and  manners  alike,  by  whom  the  note,  when  sounded, 
was  sure  to  be  caught  up.  And  so  they  were  fortunate 
at  first  in  "leaving  great  verse  unto  a  little  clan," 
to  be  preserved  and  handed  down  afterwards  as  the 
inheritance  of  all  civilised  peoples. 

It  was  part  of  Tennyson's  dubitating  temperament 
that  he  planned  out  his  foreign  travels  with  interior 
misgivings,  and  with  much  wavering  as  to  purpose 
and  direction.  FitzGerald  writes  (1845)  that  the  poet 
"  has  been  for  six  weeks  intending  to  start  every  day 
for  Switzerland  or  Cornwall,  he  does  not  know  which  " ; 
and  in  1846  we  read  again  that  he  has  been  "  for  two 
weeks  striving  to  spread  his  wings  to  Italy  or  Switzer- 
land. It  has  ended  in  his  flying  to  the  Isle  of  Wight 
for  autumn."  However,  in  August  of  that  year  he 
did  cross  the  sea  to  Ostend ;  and  his  journal  of  a  tour 
through  Belgium  and  up  the  Ehine  into  Switzerland 
gives  jotted  impressions  of  travel,  marking  his  route 
and  mainly  recording  his  discomforts.  He  was  knocked 
out  of  bed  one  morning  at  four  o'clock  to  look  at 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  55 

Mont  Blanc  without  the  cloudy  night-cap ;  "  the  glance 
I  gave  him  did  not  by  any  means  repay  me  for  the 
trouble  of  travelling  to  see  him,"  including,  we  may 
suppose,  his  disgust  at  the  "  infernal  clatter  of  innumer- 
able apes  "  in  a  Swiss  hotel.  Next  year  he  was  under 
hydropathic  treatment  in  England,  so  much  occupied 
with  his  poems  that  he  suspended  correspondence  with 
friends  and  relations,  wherefore  the  personal  chronicle 
of  this  time  is  scantier  than  ever.  He  had  been  long 
meditating  upon  a  social  question  that  had  been 
philosophically  discussed  since  Eousseau's  day,  had 
been  touched  upon  by  Bentham  and  James  Mill,  but 
had  never  yet  come  within  the  sphere  of  practical 
English  politics;  and  the  outcome,  in  1847,  was  his 
poem  of  The  Princess. 

Here  is  a  romantic  tale,  with  the  Idea  of  a  Female 
University  for  its  theme  and  plot,  and  for  its  moral 
the  sure  triumph  of  the  natural  affections  over  any 
feminine  attempt  to  ignore  them,  or  to  work  out 
women's  independence  by  a  kind  of  revolt  from  the 
established  intellectual  dominion  of  man.  The 
Princess  repudiates  a  contract  of  marriage  with  a 
Prince  to  whom  she  has  been  betrothed  in  child- 
hood, purposing  to  devote  herself  to  the  higher 
education  of  her  own  sex,  in  order  that  they  may 
be  mentally  prepared  to  insist  upon  liberty  and 
equality.  But  the  Prince,  with  two  comrades,  puts 
on  women's  clothing;  and  they  enter  themselves  as 
students  in  a  college  that  admits  women  only  within 
its  bounds;  they  are  speedily  detected,  as  was  obvi- 
ously inevitable ;  and  the  contrabandists  are  scornfully 
expelled,  as  they  fully  deserved  to  be.  The  Prince's 
father  declares  war  upon  the  father  of  the  Princess 


56  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  enforce  the  marriage  contract;  but  it  is  agreed 
to  settle  the  quarrel  by  a  combat  of  fifty  picked 
warriors  on  either  side;  when  the  Prince  is  beaten 
down  in  the  lists,  and  all  the  College  is  turned  into  a 
hospital  for  the  wounded  men,  most  of  the  girl  graduates 
being  judiciously  ordered  home.  The  Princess  remains 
to  nurse  the  defeated  Prince  and  to  read  poetry  by  his 
bedside,  with  the  natural  consequence  that  in  tending 
him  she  is  drawn  to  love  him,  abandons  her  University, 
and  marries  her  betrothed. 

It  is  a  beautiful  serio-comic  love-story,  that  has  been 
treated  over-seriously  not  only  by  those  who  dislike 
playing  with  a  subject  which  is  for  them  a  matter 
of  hard  and  earnest  argument,  but  also  by  others 
to  whom  the  poem  is  "the  herald  melody  of  the 
higher  education  of  women."  The  logical  conclusion 
from  the  denouement  is  that  matrimony  is  better  for 
women  than  a  life  exclusively  devoted  to  the  super- 
intendence of  a  sort  of  nunnery,  in  'which  girls  are  to 
be  trained  and  fitted  to  cast  off  the  yoke  of  men's 
pretentious  superiority.  Nor  indeed  was  the  college 
projected  by  the  Princess  as  an  alternative  or  antidote 
to  marriage,  but  only  in  order  that,  if  afterwards 
they  chose  to  wed,  they  might  do  so  on  equal  terms 
of  intellectual  companionship.  A  solid  project  of 
educational  reform  is  surrounded  with  fantastic  cir- 
cumstances of  romantic  adventure,  and  is  made  the 
groundwork  of  some  very  fine  poetry ;  while  the 
substitution  of  women  instead  of  men  everywhere  in 
the  framework  of  college  life  and  discipline  gives 
ample  room  for  artistic  sketches  of  novel  situations 
and  costumes.  The  underlying  social  philosophy  is, 
as  usual,  moderate  and  sensible  :  the  supremacy  of 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  57 

Love  is  temperately  asserted ;  the  true  value  of  the 
poem  is  rightly  made  to  consist  in  its  decorative 
beauty,  in  some  delicate  delineations  of  characters, 
in  verse  of  sustained  musical  effect,  and  in  a  few 
exquisite  lyrics  that  vary  the  unrhymed  metre.  The 
tender  melancholy  of  a  feeling  that  life  may  be  passing 
without  love,  of  vague  regrets  and  longings,  has  never 
been  more  sympathetically  expressed  than  in  the  song 
of  Tears,  idle  Tears,  with  its  refrain  of  the  days 
that  are  no  more,  and  the  shadow  of  mortal  darkness 
already  falling  over  the  season  of  youth: — 

"  Ah,  sad  and  strange  as  in  dark  summer  dawns 
The  earliest  pipe  of  half-awaken'd  birds 
To  dying  ears,  when  unto  dying  eyes 
The  casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering  square ; 
So  sad,  so  strange,  the  days  that  are  no  more." 

Few  know,  Tennyson  said  long  afterwards  to  his  son,1 
that  this  is  a  blank  verse  lyric ;  and  perhaps  there  is 
no  better  example  of  a  metrical  arrangement  of  words 
into  musical  passages,  divided  into  stanzas  by  the  re- 
curring cadence  of  each  final  line.  Another  song,  The 
Splendour  falls  on  Castle  Walls,  charms  the  ear,  on 
the  other  hand,  by  harmonious  assonance  and  dwelling 
on  long-drawn  rhymes.  But  Home  they  brought  their 
Warrior  Dead,  in  which  (to  quote  Charles  Kingsley) 
"the  sight  of  the  fallen  hero's  child  opens  the 
sluices  of  the  widow's  tears,"  is  the  one  piece  that 
might  have  been  written  by  an  inferior  songster,  and 
it  has  earned  popularity  by  touching  a  somewhat 
ordinary  and  facile  note  of  pathos.  It  resembles  too 
nearly  an  affecting  anecdote.  The  amorous  strain 

1  Memoir. 


58  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

running  through  the  whole  poem  indicates  the  under- 
current of  natural  passion  which  is  sapping  the  whole 
edifice  of  female  independence  and  self-reliance  that 
the  Princess  has  undertaken  to  build  up  on  the  basis 
of  intellectual  emancipation ;  while  the  hard  lesson 
that  all  the  refinements  of  cultured  civilisation  are 
powerless  when  confronted  by  the  primitive  appeal  to 
force,  is  taught  by  the  eventual  dissolution  of  the 
University  amid  the  clash  of  arms.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  Princess  brought  this  catastrophe  upon 
herself  by  the  very  drastic  ordinance  which  decreed 
death  to  any  man  found  within  the  walls  of  her  college 
— a  characteristic  sample,  though  it  may  not  have  been 
so  intended,  of  the  quick  resentment,  the  propensity 
toward  short  and  sharp  measures  with  offenders  and 
enemies,  that  may  be  observed  whenever  women  have 
risen  to  supreme  rulership  in  troubled  times.  And  the 
fact  that  all  the  illustrious  types  of  feminine  superiority 
cited  by  the  Princess  in  her  discourses,  or  by  the  Lady 
Ida  in  her  professorial  address — from  the  legendary 
Amazon  down  to  Joan  of  Arc — are  women  renowned  in 
war,  might  possibly  be  taken  as  the  poet's  subtle  in- 
sinuation of  female  inconsistency.  For  the  whole  aim 
and  educational  policy  of  the  College,  if  it  was  designed 
to  promote  equality  between  the  sexes,  should  have 
been  to  denounce  and  depreciate  the  profession  of 
arms,  because  that  is  the  immovable  corner-stone  of 
masculine  superiority. 

The  poem  was  materially  altered  and  partly  re- 
modelled in  the  four  editions  that  followed  its  first 
issue ;  and  a  line  was  inserted  to  show,  as  the  Memoir 
tells  us,  that  Tennyson  "certainly  did  not  mean  to 
kill  any  one  in  the  tournament " ;  though  this  casts  a 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  59 

shade  of  unreality  over  his  description  of  a  fierce  en- 
counter with  sharp  steel.  Some  passages  in  which  the 
scornful  invectives  of  the  Princess  border  too  nearly 
upon  scolding,1  are  also  judiciously  struck  out;  and 
six  of  the  songs  were  introduced  in  1850.  In  regard 
to  the  metaphors  and  illustrative  comparisons  that 
abound  throughout  the  narrative,  we  may  notice  how 
one  point  in  a  simile  brings  in  a  picture,  after  the 
Homeric  fashion — 

"  She  read,  till  over  brow 

And  cheek  and  bosom  brake  the  wrathful  bloom 
As  of  some  fire  against  a  stormy  cloud, 
When  the  wild  peasant  rights  himself,  the  rick 
Flames,  and  hia  anger  reddens  in  the  heavens." 

Here  we  have  a  reminiscence  of  rick -burning  to 
illustrate  a  hot  cheek;  and  one  can  see  that  the 
poet's  mind  was  continually  seizing,  retaining,  and 
coining  into  words  the  impressions  of  sight  and 
hearing,  even  if  he  had  not  told  us  of  his  method. 

"  There  was  a  period  in  my  life  (he  wrote  in  a  letter)  when, 
as  an  artist,  Turner,  for  instance,  takes  rough  sketches  of 
landscape,  etc.,  in  order  to  work  them  eventually  into  some 
great  picture,  so  I  was  in  the  habit  of  chronicling,  in  four  or 
five  words  or  more,  whatever  might  strike  me  as  picturesque 
in  Nature.  I  never  put  these  down,  and  many  and  many  a 
line  lias  gone  away  on  the  north  wind,  but  some  remain."  2 

He  proceeds  to  give  specimens ;  and  he  further  remarks, 
most  truly,  that  he  might  easily  have  borrowed  from 
the  energetic  language  of  the  people  expressions  and 

1  "  Go  help  the  half-brained  dwarf,  Society, 
To  find  low  motives  unto  noble  deeds." 

Go,  fitter  far  for  narrower  neighbourhoods, 
Old  talker,  haunt  where  gossip  breeds  and  seethes. 
8  Memoir. 


60  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

images  which  the  critics  would  have  credited  to  the 
effort  of  original  creative  fancy,  but  would  have  con- 
demned as  unreal  and  non-natural.  For  the  vernacular 
speech  takes  its  lights  and  shades  directly  from  things 
visible ; l  and  in  its  metaphors  one  can  detect  a  sur- 
vival of  the  primitive  animism,  as  in  Tennyson's 
instance  of  an  old  fishwife,  who  had  lost  two  sons  at 
sea,  crying  to  the  advancing  tide — 

"  Ay,  roar,  do,  how  I  hates  to  see  thee  show  thy  white  teeth."  2 

When  the  popular  superstition  becomes  a  literary 
device,  it  is  quite  possible  to  abuse  the  poetic  licence 
that  invests  senseless  things  with  a  kind  of  human 
passion,  as  in  Kingsley's  verse  of  "  the  cruel  crawling 
foam."  But  Tennyson  never  overcharged  his  meta- 
phors in  this  way ;  and  it  is  certain  that  in  language 
what  is  true,  what  has  been  actually  said,  is  often 
quite  as  strong  as  what  has  been  imagined,  and  that 
no  more  powerful  words  can  be  deliberately  invented 
than  those  which  can  be  suddenly  wrung  out  of  a 
man  by  mortal  danger  or  some  violent  emotion. 

During  the  years  1846-50  Tennyson  lived  mostly  at 
Cheltenham,  making  excursions  to  Cornwall  and  to 
Scotland,  where  he  traversed  the  classic  ground  of 
Burns's  poetry.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  quote  here 
a  passage  from  the  "Euphranor"  of  E.  FitzGerald, 
where,  in  mentioning  Tennyson's  emotion  on  seeing 
"the  banks  and  braes  of  bonnie  Doon,"  he  is  led  on  to 
some  striking  and  very  sympathetic  recollections  of 
his  friend. 

1  E.g.- 

"  He  shall  never  darken  my  door." 

2  Memoir. 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  61 

"...  The  only  living,  and  like  to  live,  Poet  I  had  known, 
when,  so  many  years  after,  he  found  himself  beside  that 
'  bonnie  Boon,'  and — whether  it  were  from  recollection  of  poor 
Burns,  or  of  '  the  days  that  are  no  more '  which  haunt  us  all, 
I  know  not — I  think  he  did  not  know — but,  he  somehow 
'  broke,'  as  he  told  me, '  broke  into  a  passion  of  tears.'  Of  tears, 
which  during  a  long  and  pretty  intimate  intercourse,  I  had 
never  seen  glisten  in  his  eye  but  once,  when  reading  Virgil — 
'  dear  old  Virgil,'  as  he  called  him — together  :  and  then  of  the 
burning  of  Troy  in  the  second  uEneid — whether  moved  by  the 
catastrophe's  self,  or  the  majesty  of  the  verse  it  is  told  in — or, 
as  before,  scarce  knowing  why.  For,  as  King  Arthur  shall 
bear  witness,  no  young  Edwin  he,  though,  as  a  great  Poet, 
comprehending  all  the  softer  stops  of  human  Emotion  in  that 
Register  where  the  Intellectual,  no  less  than  what  is  called  the 
Poetical,  faculty  predominated.  As  all  who  knew  him  know, 
a  Man  at  all  points,  Euphranor — like  young  Digby,  of  grand 
proportion  and  feature,  significant  of  that  inward  Chivalry, 
becoming  his  ancient  and  honourable  race  ;  when  himself  a 
'  Yonge  Squire,'  like  him  in  Chaucer,  '  of  grete  strength,'  that 
could  hurl  the  crowbar  further  than  any  of  the  neighbouring 
clowns,  whose  humours,  as  well  as  of  their  betters — Knight, 
Squire,  Landlord,  and  Land-tenant — he  took  quiet  note  of,  like 
Chaucer  himself. " 

Another  journey  was  to  Ireland,  where  the  echoes  of 
Killarney  inspired  the  bugle  song  in  The  Princess. 
The  Memoir  tells  us  that  he  saw  much  of  Thackeray 
and  Carlyle,  among  other  notables.  He  loved  Catullus 
as  a  poet  whose  form  and  feeling,  the  sweetness 
of  his  verse  and  his  enjoyment  of  reposeful  rusticity, 
attest  an  affinity  between  two  cultured  civilisations 
that  are  separated  by  a  long  interval  of  time,  though 
the  contrast  of  morals  is  often  wide  enough.  It  was  not 
in  Thackeray's  town-bred  nature  to  rate  the  Roman 
high ;  yet  we  find  him  writing  a  handsome  apology  for 
having  said  in  his  haste,  when  Tennyson  quoted  to 


62  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

him  Catullus,  that  he  could  do  better  himself.  Carlyle 
"had  opened  the  gates  of  his  Valhalla  to  let  Alfred 
in,"  and  evidently  enjoyed  high  discourse  with  him. 
Between  two  such  men  there  were  necessarily  frequent 
argumentative  collisions,  their  minds  were  predisposed 
by  training  and  temperament  to  divergent  views,  and 
their  intellectual  perspective  was  by  no  means  the 
same.  Carlyle  saw  the  follies  and  iniquities  of  the 
world  through  a  lurid  magnify  ing  glass;  he  prophesied 
ruin  like  an  ancient  seer,  and  called  down  the  wrath  of 
God  upon  knaves  and  idiots;  while  Tennyson's  in- 
clination was  towards  indulgence  of  human  frailty,  and 
hope  in  the  slow  betterment  of  the  world.  Violence  in 
word  or  deed  was  to  him  antipathetic ;  and  one  may 
guess  that  he  preferred  to  study  heroes  in  their  quieter 
moods,  in  some  such  fits  of  musing  as  those  which 
Shakespeare  interjects  among  scenes  of  furious  action. 
He  might  have  given  us  Cromwell  reflecting  in  a 
soliloquy  upon  the  burden  of  solitary  rulership,  sur- 
rounded by  fanatics  and  conspirators.  An  extract  from 
his  conversations  with  Mrs.  Bundle  Charles  indicates 
one  point  of  what  Tennyson  thought  about  Carlyle, 
"  You  would  like  him  for  one  day,  but  get  tired  of  him, 
so  vehement  and  destructive " ;  the  fastidious  poet 
must  have  found  in  him  too  much  sound  and  fury,  and 
may  possibly  have  doubted  whether  it  signified  any- 
thing. FitzGerald  says  in  one  of  his  letters  (1846) — 

"  I  met  Carlyle  last  night  at  Tennyson's,  and  they  two  dis- 
cussed the  merits  of  this  world  and  the  next,  till  I  wished 
myself  out  of  this,  at  any  rate.  Carlyle  gets  more  wild, 
savage,  and  unreasonable  every  day,  and  I  do  believe  will 
turn  mad." 

Tennyson    preferred    the    Odyssey    to    the    Iliad : 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  63 

Carlyle,  who  liked  fierce  heroes,  and  had  no  objection 
as  a  historian  to  stern  cruelty,  though  a  little  personal 
discomfort  was  intolerable  to  him,  would  probably  have 
taken  the  other  side  ;  but  on  the  subject  of  tobacco  they 
were  at  any  rate  of  one  mind,  and  on  all  questions  they 
disputed  with  amicable  vigour.  Later  on  Carlyle,  at 
some  moment  when  he  was  more  than  usually  sour 
and  crusty,  described  the  poet  as  sitting  on  a  dunghill 
amid  innumerable  dead  dogs ;  meaning,  as  one  may 
guess,  no  more  than  impatience  with  a  man  of  rare 
intellect  who  seemed  to  him  to  sit  dreaming  on  the 
shores  of  old  romance  while  the  State  of  England  was 
rotten  with  shams  and  mouldy  with  whited  sepulchres. 
But  Carlyle  afterwards  confessed  that  "his  own 
description  was  not  luminous " ;  and  though  he  cared 
little  for  verse,  yet  he  could  quote  Tears,  idle  Tears, 
felt  the  spirit  of  the  ballad  of  The  Eevenge,  was  quite 
upset  when  The  Grandmother  was  read  to  him,  and 
said  towards  his  life's  end  that  Alfred  always  from  the 
beginning  took  the  right  side  of  every  question.1  About 
the  same  time  FitzGerald  writes  of  Tennyson :  "  He  is 
the  same  magnanimous,  kindly,  delightful  fellow  as  ever; 
uttering  by  far  the  finest  prose  sayings  of  any  one." 

It  will  be  recollected  that  Arthur  Hallam  died  at 
Vienna  in  1833.  Some  of  the  sections  of  Tennyson's 
monumental  elegy  upon  his  friend  were  written 
very  soon  afterwards ;  and  their  number  had  rapidly 
increased  by  1841,  when  Edmund  Lushington  first 
saw  the  collection  and  heard  the  poet  recite  some  of 
them.  It  must  have  been  not  far  from  completion  in 
1845,  since  in  that  year  Lushington  was  shown  the 
1  Memoir, 


64  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

stanzas  upon  his  marriage  with  Tennyson's  younger 
sister  Cecilia,  with  which  the  poem  is  now  concluded. 
Eight  editions,  all  of  them  containing  successive  addi- 
tions and  alterations,  followed  the  first  publication 
of  In  Memoriam  in  1850,  which  may  accordingly  be 
taken  as  the  outcome  of  seventeen  years'  meditative 
composition.  Of  all  Tennyson's  continuous  poems  it 
is  the  longest  and  the  most  elaborate;  it  affected 
profoundly  the  minds  of  the  generation  among  whom 
it  appeared ;  it  embodies  the  writer's  philosophy  upon 
the  ever-present  subject  of  life  and  death,  upon  all 
the  problems  suggested  by  the  mutability  of  the 
world's  face  and  forms,  and  on  the  questions  whether 
human  mortality  may  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  the 
universal  natural  law,  whether  faith  in  things  spiritual 
is  a  true  intuition,  or  no  more  than  a  hopeful  conjecture, 

than  a  painting  of 

"  the  shadows  that  are  beneath 
The  wide  winding  caves  of  the  peopled  tomb."  x 

The  poet,  like  Bunyan's  pilgrim,  forces  his  way  through 
the  slough  of  despond,  passes  the  caverns  of  Doubt 
and  Despair,  and  emerges  finally  into  resignation, 
with  trust  in  the  Unseen  Power  that  is  guiding  all 
creation  to  some  far-off  divine  event.  In  this  noble 
poem  —  on  the  whole  Tennyson's  masterpiece — all 
natural  things  that  catch  his  eye  or  ear  remind  him, 
by  contrast  or  sympathy,  of  his  bereavement,  and 
interpret  his  personal  emotion.  Many  of  us  know 
how  the  whole  world  seems  changed  and  discoloured 
by  some  calamitous  shock ;  and  here  the  vivid  sensi- 
bility of  the  poet  reflects  and  illustrates  this  state  of 
mind  by  figures,  emblems,  and  solemn  meditations. 
1  Shelley. 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  65 

He  is  impelled  by  his  own  passionate  grief  to  dwell 
upon  the  contrast  between  irremediable  human  suffer- 
ing and  the  calm  aspect  of  inanimate  Nature,  between 
the  short  and  sorrowful  days  of  man  and  the  long 
procession  of  ages.  From  the  misgivings  and  per- 
plexities, the  tendency  to  lose  heart,  engendered  by 
a  sense  of  being  environed  by  forces  that  are  blind 
and  relentless,  he  finds  his  ultimate  escape  in  the 
conviction  that  God  and  Nature  cannot  be  at  strife, 
that  friends  will  meet  and  know  each  other  again 
hereafter,  and  that  somehow  good  will  be  the  final 
goal  of  ill.  His  sure  and  never-failing  mastery  of 
poetic  diction,  gained  by  practice  and  severe  dis- 
cipline, carries  him  through  this  long  monotone  with 
a  high  and  even  flight ;  the  four  lines  are  fitted 
into  each  stanza  without  flaws,  in  singular  harmony  j 
the  sections  are  complete  in  writing,  measure,  and 
balance. 

No  chapter  in  the  Memoir  contains  matter  of  higher 
biographical  interest  than  that  which  is  headed  "  In 
Memoriam."  A  letter  from  the  late  Henry  Sidgwick, 
whose  clear  and  intrepid  spirit  never  flinched  before 
intellectual  doubts  or  vague  forebodings,  describes 
the  impression  produced  on  him  and  on  others  of 
his  time  by  this  poem,  showing  how  it  struck  in,  so 
to  speak,  upon  their  religious  debates  at  a  moment  of 
conflicting  tendencies  and  great  uncertainty  of  direc- 
tion, giving  intensity  of  expression  to  the  dominant 
feeling  and  wider  range  to  the  prevailing  thought. 

"  The  most  important  influence  of  '  In  Memoriam '  on  my 
thought,  apart  from  its  poetic  charm  as  an  expression  of 
personal  emotion,  opened  in  a  region,  if  I  may  so  say,  deeper 
down  than  the  difference  between  Theism  and  Christianity  : 

E 


66  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

it  lay  in  the  unparalleled  combination  of  intensity  of  feeling 
with  comprehensiveness  of  view  and  balance  of  judgment, 
shown  in  presenting  the  deepest  needs  and  perplexities  of 
humanity.  And  this  influence,  I  find,  has  increased  rather 
than  diminished  as  years  have  gone  on,  and  as  the  great  issues 
between  Agnostic  Science  and  Faith  have  become  continually 
more  prominent.  In  the  sixties  I  should  say  that  these  deeper 
issues  were  somewhat  obscured  by  the  discussions  on  Christian 
dogma,  and  Inspiration  of  Scripture,  etc.  .  .  .  During  these 
years  we  were  absorbed  in  struggling  for  freedom  of  thought 
in  the  trammels  of  a  historical  religion  ;  and  perhaps  what  we 
sympathized  with  most  in  '  In  Memoriam '  at  this  time,  apart 
from  the  personal  feeling,  was  the  defence  of  '  honest  doubt,' 
the  reconciliation  of  knowledge  and  faith  in  the  introductory 
poem,  and  the  hopeful  trumpet-ring  of  the  lines  on  the  New 
Year.  .  .  .  Well,  the  years  pass,  the  struggle  with  what 
Carlyle  used  to  call  '  Hebrew  old  clothes '  is  over,  Freedom  is 
won,  and  what  does  Freedom  bring  us  to  ?  It  brings  us  face 
to  face  with  atheistic  science  ;  the  faith  in  God  and  Immor- 
tality, which  we  had  been  struggling  to  clear  from  superstition, 
suddenly  seems  to  be  in  the  air  ;  and  in  seeking  for  a  firm 
basis  for  this  faith  we  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  the  '  fight 
with  death '  which  '  In  Memoriam '  so  powerfully  presents." 

The  whole  letter,  which  is  too  long  for  quotation 
here,  may  be  read  in  the  Memoir  as  a  fair  representa- 
tion of  the  effect  produced  by  In  Memoriam  upon 
men  of  sincere  and  sensitive  minds,  who  resolutely 
confronted  the  inexorable  facts  of  human  existence, 
yet  were  not  content  to  treat  the  problems  as  in- 
soluble. And  so  the  wide  impression  that  was  made 
by  these  exquisitely  musical  meditations  may  be 
ascribed  to  their  sympathetic  affinity  with  the 
peculiar  spiritual  aspirations  and  intellectual  dilem- 
mas of  the  time.  Dogmatic  theology,  notwithstanding 
the  famous  rallying  movement  at  Oxford,  had  long 
been  losing  ground ;  liturgies  and  positive  articles  of 


in.]          THli  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  67 

religion  ware  out  of  credit ;  the  proofs  of  Christianity 
by  rational  evidence  brought  religion  upon  the  un- 
favourable ground  of  appeal  to  history  and  to  questions 
of  fact.  Among  average  Englishmen  a  large  number 
were  willing  to  take  morality  as  the  chief  test  of 
religious  truth,  were  disposed  to  hold  that  its  essen- 
tial principles  were  best  stated  in  the  language  of  ethics. 
The  Utilitarian  philosophers  undertook  to  provide 
ethics  with  an  experimental  basis ;  and  the  researches 
of  physical  science  threw  doubt  upon  the  actuality  of 
divine  intervention  in  the  course,  or  even  the  constitu- 
tion, of  the  world  ;  they  pointed  to  a  system  that  was 
mechanical,  though  not  necessarily  materialistic.  Then 
came,  with  a  reaction,  the  energetic  protests  of  those 
who  saw  and  felt  that  Religion,  which  is  to  the  vast 
majority  of  mankind  a  spiritual  necessity,  must  not 
stand  o^  fall  by  documentary  evidence,  must  be  placed 
in  some  region  that  is  inaccessible  to  arguments  from 
mere  utility,  that  is  independent  of  and  untouched  by 
the  observation  of  phenomena  or  the  computation  of 
probabilities.  Some  endeavoured  to  show  that  the 
conclusions  of  Science  could  be  reconciled  with  the 
orthodox  traditions ;  others,  as  Newman,  declared  that 
there  was  no  conflict  at  all,  that  theology  is  the 
highest  science,  entirely  above  and  unaffected  by  what 
used  to  be  called  natural  philosophy ;  but  Tennyson 
saw  that  a  serious  conflict,  a  revolution  of  ideas,  was 
inevitable.  All  speculation,  physical  or  metaphysical, 
is  necessarily  affected  by  what  we  know  of  the  world 
we  live  in;  and  the  unrolling  of  the  record  of  an 
immeasurable  past  compels  us  to  look  with  new 
feelings  on  all  that  goes  on  around  us.  If  we  com- 
pare Tennyson  with  Wordsworth,  we  are  at  once 


88  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

aware  of  a  marked  difference  in  their  treatment  of 
Nature.  Wordsworth  dwells  mainly  upon  her  calm, 
majestic,  and  kindly  aspect ;  she  is  the  homely  nurse 
who  endeavours  to  content  the  immortal  soul  of 
imperial  man  with  his  humble  abode  on  earth ;  she 
is  beautiful  and  beneficent;  she  "lifts  the  spirit  to 
a  calmer  height";  and  although  Wordsworth  may 
be  occasionally  touched  by  her  insensibility  to  human 
sorrow,  may  be  perplexed  by  finding  her  ways  unin- 
telligible, yet  he  discerns  everywhere  the  interfusion 
of  a  divine  spirit,  the  evidences  of  admirable  arrange- 
ment and  design.  For  Tennyson  also  the  external 
world  was  sublime  and  beautiful,  soothing  his  regrets 
and  suggesting  resignation  to  the  common  lot;  but 
the  illimitable  expansion  of  time  and  space  laid  open 
by  scientific  discoveries,  the  record  of  waste  and 
prodigality  through  countless  ages,  the  disclosure  of 
the  processes  of  Nature,  her  impassive  uniformity, 
her  implacable  regularity,  took  strong  hold  of  an 
imaginative  mind  that  was  in  communion  with  the 
thought  and  knowledge  of  the  day.  After  Tennyson's 
death  Huxley  wrote  that  he  was  the  only  modern 
poet,  perhaps  the  only  poet  since  Lucretius,  who 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  understand  the  work  and 
methods  of  men  of  science ;  though  one  may  remark 
that  the  two  poets  found  their  consolation  in  very 
different  conclusions.  It  now  seemed  to  him  that 
the  scientific  men  were  laying  claims  to  a  dominion 
which  might  place  in  jeopardy  not  merely  the  formal 
outworks  but  the  central  dogma  of  Christianity, 
which  is  a  belief  in  a  future  life,  in  the  soul's 
conscious  immortality.  Is  man  subject  to  the  general 
law  of  unending  mutability,  and  is  he  after  all  but 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  69 

the  highest  and  latest  type,  to  be  made  and  broken 
like  a  million  others,  mere  clay  in  the  moulding 
hands  that  are  darkly  seen  in  the  evolution  of  worlds  1 
The  poet  transfigured  these  obstinate  questionings 
into  the  vision  of 

"an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep." 

He  asks  :  Shall  man 

"  Who  loved,  who  suffer'd  countless  ills, 
Who  battled  for  the  True,  the  Just, 
Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust, 
Or  seal'd  within  the  iron  hills  ?  " 

and  he  was  haunted  by  the  misgiving  that  man  also 
might  be  no  more  than  other  atoms  in  the  ever- 
changing  universe,  that  prayer  is  fruitless,  that  death 
may  be  stronger  than  love,  and  that  Nature  gives 
no  intimations  of  conscious  survival.  Nevertheless 
her  face,  as  he  sees  it,  is  so  fair  that  it  brings  him 
consolation.  The  alternations  of  the  seasons,  the 
storm  and  the  sunshine,  are  reflected  in  his  varying 
moods;  the  spring  breezes  carry  a  cheerful  message, 
the  autumnal  gales  accord  with  the  unrest  of  his 
mind ;  a  quiet  sea  turns  his  thoughts  to  the  calm 
of  death.  He  feels  the  immemorial  touch  of  sadness 
in  the  brief  lifetime  of  flower  and  foliage,  in  the  passing 
of  the  long  light  summer  days ;  yet  beyond  all  these 
transitory  images  he  looks  forward  to  the  twilight  of 
eternal  day  on  the  low,  dark  verge  of  human  existence, 
where  the  mysteries  of  pain  and  sorrow  will  be  under- 
stood, and  no  more  shadows  will  fall  on  the  landscape 
of  the  past.  After  long  striving  with  doubts  and  fears, 


70  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

after  having  "  fought  with  death,"  he  resolves  that  we 
cannot  be  "  wholly  brain,  magnetic  mockeries  "- 

"  Not  only  cunning  casts  in  clay  : 

Let  Science  prove  we  are,  and  then 
What  matters  Science  unto  men, 
At  least  to  me  ?    I  would  not  stay." 

After  this  manner  Tennyson  made  his  stand  against 
the  encroachments  of  Science  upon  the  spiritual  domain; 
though  he  refused  to  retreat,  like  some  others,  behind 
dogmatic  entrenchments,  and  trod  under  foot  the  terrors 
of  Acheron.  By  tight-lacing  creeds,  to  use  Carlyle's 
phrase,  he  would  not  be  bound ;  he  believed  firmly  in 
some  indissoluble  relation  between  human  destinies 
and  a  divine  providence ;  he  reckoned  the  strenuous 
instinct  and  universal  anticipation  of  some  future  life 
to  be  presumptive  evidence  of  a  truth ;  and  he  was 
confident  that  friends  would  meet  and  know  each 
other  hereafter.  A  poem  which  is  a  long  epitaph 
must  naturally  touch  in  this  consolatory  strain  upon 
the  visitations  of  sorrow  and  death  ;  but  it  must  also 
remind  us  of  the  limitations,  the  inconclusiveness, 
that  are  inseparable  from  the  emotional  treatment  of 
enigmas  that  foil  the  deepest  philosophies.  And  since 
not  every  one  can  be  satisfied  with  subjective  faith 
or  lofty  intuitions,  it  may  be  that  the  note  of  alarm 
and  despondency  sounded  by  In  Memoriam  startled 
more  minds  than  were  reassured  by  the  poet's  final 
conviction  that  all  is  well 

"  tho'  faith  and  form 
Be  sunder'd  in  the  night  of  fear." 

If,  therefore,  the  poem  strengthened  in  many  the 
determination  to  go  onward  trustfully,  on  the  other 
hand  there  was  an  attitude  of  terror  in  the  recoil  from 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  71 

materialistic  paths  that  lead  to  an  abyss  ;  and  perhaps 
it  may  be  so  far  counted  among  the  influences  which 
have  combined  to  promote  a  retreat  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  toward  the  shelter 
of  dogmatic  beliefs  and  an  infallible  authority  in 
matters  of  religion.  But  whatever  may  have  been 
the  intellectual  influences  of  In  Memoriam,  we  may 
agree  that  it  enlarged  the  range  of  poetry  by  entering 
sympathetically  upon  the  field  of  these  fresh  doubts 
and  difficulties,  and  by  showing  how  a  mind  that  in 
grief  turns  naturally  to  religion  may  become  absorbed 
in  intellectual  problems.  Wordsworth  found  content 
in  the  contemplation  of  Nature  ;  Science  he  despised, 
and  such  questions  as  whether  God  and  Nature  are 
at  strife  did  not  trouble  his  serene  philosophy. 
Tennyson's  meditations  were  turned  toward  the 
enigmas  of  life  by  the  stroke  of  grief;  and  he  was 
thus  led,  rightly,  to  fulfil  the  poet's  mission,  which  is 
to  embody  the  floating  thought  of  his  period.  In 
those  very  popular  lines 

"  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

we  have  an  antithesis,  a  kind  of  paradox,  that  concisely 
represents  the  prevailing  state  of  many  minds  to  whom 
scientific  explorations  brought  increasing  religious  per- 
plexity, until  they  obtained  repose  in  the  conclusion 
that  essential  truths  lie  somewhere  beyond  and  are 
independent  of  all  positive  doctrines  and  formulas. 
"Our  little  systems  have  their  day";  we  may  believe 
where  we  cannot  verify,  and  Knowledge  must  have  her 
place  as  the  younger  child  of  Wisdom.  The  poet  leads 
us  to  a  cloudy  height ;  and  though  it  is  not  his  business 


72  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  satisfy  the  strict  philosophical  enquirer,  he  offers  to 
all  wandering  souls  a  refuge  in  the  faith 

"    .  .  that  comes  of  self-control, 

The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved 
Until  we  close  with  all  we  loved 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 

We  know  from  the  Memoir  that  Tennyson  believed 
himself  to  be  the  originator  of  the  metre  of  In 
Memoriam,  until  after  its  appearance  he  was  told  that 
it  might  be  found  in  Elizabethan  poetry  and  else- 
where.1 Of  the  two  specimens  in  Ben  Jonson,  one  of 
them,  the  elegy  Underwood,  has  a  certain  resemblance 
in  movement  and  tone  with  Tennyson's  shorter  pieces 
in  the  same  metre,  probably  because  in  this  form  the 
stanza  carries  naturally  a  certain  dignity  and  sobriety 
of  feeling,  and  is  well  suited  by  its  measured  regularity 
for  compact  and  sententious  expression.  The  inter- 
position of  a  couplet  with  a  rhyme  of  its  own  between 
the  first  and  fourth  line,  stays  the  pace  of  the  verse. 
Yet  the  high  pathetic  vibrations  of  feeling  in  the  finest 
passages  of  In  Memoriam  prove  that  in  Tennyson's 
hands  the  instrument  had  acquired  a  wider  range ; 
while  the  main  current  of  his  meditations  passes 
through  so  many  varieties  of  impressions  or  aspects  of 
nature,  the  dim  rainy  morning,  the  short  midsummer 
night,  the  bitter  wintry  day,  with  moods  corresponding 
to  these  influences,  that  few  will  agree  with  Fitzgerald's 
objection  to  the  poem  as  monotonous. 

In  a  little  volume  published  in  1866  under  the  title 
of  Tennysonia,  the  writer,  who  is  an  ardent  admirer  of 

1  A  complete  list  of  the  writers  who  had  used  the  metre  is 
given  in  the  commentary  on  "In  Memoriam"  by  Professor  A. 
C.  Bradley  (1901). 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  73 

the  poet,  has  been  at  the  pains  of  pointing  out,  by 
parallel  quotations,  certain  coincidences  of  thought 
and  phrase  between  In  Memoriam  and  Shakespeare's 
sonnets.  Something  of  the  kind  is  here  and  there 
faintly  traceable,  and  the  "ruined  woodlands"  in 
Maud  might  remind  us  of  Shakespeare's  likening  the 
leafless  trees  to  "bare  ruined  choirs,  where  once  the 
sweet  birds  sang."  But  in  Shakespeare  himself,  as  in 
all  other  poets,  similar  reminiscences  of  this  kind  may 
be  discovered,  nor  could  they  ever  be  rightly  made  an 
imputation  against  any  great  writer.  FitzGerald  gives 
the  sound  ruling  on  this  subject  in  one  of  his  letters — 
"  I  never  speak  of  Plagiarism  unless  the  Coincidence, 
or  Adoption,  be  something  quite  superior  to  the  general 
Material  of  him  in  whom  the  'parallel  passage*  is 
found.  And  Shakespeare  may  have  read  the  other  old 
boy  [Tusser]  and  remembered  unconsciously,  or  never 
have  read,  and  never  remembered."  The  comparison 
in  Tennysonia  proves  at  most,  and  apparently  aims  at 
no  more  than  proving,  an  inference  that  Tennyson's 
memory  had  assimilated  the  sonnets.  And  it  is  only 
of  real  interest  when  it  shows  occasionally  how  the 
ideas  and  impressions,  which  are  as  much  the  common 
property  of  all  ages  as  the  natural  phenomena  and 
human  sensitiveness  that  produce  them,  are  set  in  new 
frames  by  the  chief  artists  of  each  succeeding  time; 
how,  to  quote  Tennyson,  the  thoughts  of  man  are 
widened  by  the  circling  of  the  suns.  The  incessant 
battle  between  sea  and  shore  reminds  Shakespeare  that 
the  solid  earth,  and  all  that  it  contains,  are  shifting 
and  transitory ;  while  Tennyson's  reflection  upon  the 
changes  of  land  and  water  takes  the  vast  scale  of 
geologic  periods — 


74  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"  There  rolls  the  deep  where  grew  the  tree. 
O  earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen  ! 
There  where  the  long  street  roars,  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea." 

The  sonnets  and  In  Memoriam  have  both  for  their 
subject  the  passionate  attachment  to  a  friend,  living 
or  dead ;  and  each  poet  turns  frequently  to  Nature 
for  an  image  of  his  emotion  or  a  response  to  it. 
It  may  be  noticed,  as  a  point  of  style,  that  whereas 
Shakespeare  strikes  off  his  image  and  fits  it  to  his 
thought,  in  two  or  four  lines,1  the  modern  artist  draws 
out  a  whole  landscape,  or  accumulates  picturesque 
touches — 

"  I  find  no  place  that  does  not  breathe 
Some  gracious  memory  of  my  friend  ; 

No  gray  old  grange,  or  lonely  fold, 
Or  low  morass  and  whispering  reed, 
Or  simple  stile  from  mead  to  mead, 

Or  sheepwalk  up  the  windy  wold  " — 

prolonging  the  description  through  several  stanzas. 
Both  poets  are  profoundly  impressed  by  Nature's 
warning  to  man  that  all  her  works  are  perishable ;  but 
while  Tennyson  is  alarmed  by  the  sense  of  mortality, 
yet  finds  hope  in  some  future  state  beyond,  Shake- 
speare, with  his  "  indolent  and  kingly  gaze  "  at  human 
fears  and  follies,  propounds  no  reassuring  speculation. 
Hamlet's  last  words  are  that  the  rest  is  silence. 

In  1836,  when  Charles  Tennyson  married  Louisa 
Sellwood,  her  sister  Emily  had  been  one  of  the 
bridesmaids.  To  her  Alfred  Tennyson  became  soon 

1  "  Like  as  the  waves  make  toward  the  pebbled  shore, 
So  do  our  minutes  hasten  to  their  end." 

— Sonnet  LX. 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  75 

afterwards  engaged ;  but  in  1840  the  prospect  of 
marriage  appeared  so  remote  that  correspondence 
between  them  was  broken  off,  and  ten  years  passed 
before  the  engagement  was  renewed.  The  wedding 
took  place  at  last  in  June  1850,  at  Shiplake  Church  on 
the  Thames,  when  the  two  became  partners  upon  a 
very  slender  capital,  including  the  expectation  of  a 
royalty  on  the  published  poems.  They  made  a 
journey  into  western  England,  visiting  Glastonbury 
and  Arthur  Hallain's  grave  at  Clevedon.  A  very 
generous  offer  from  Mr.  Monckton  Milnes  of  permanent 
quarters  in  a  wing  of  his  house  at  Fryston  they  would 
not  accept ;  they  took  a  house  at  Warninglid  in  Sussex, 
but  the  first  storm  blew  a  hole  through  the  wall,  and 
they  departed  hastily,  to  find  at  la.it  a  fixed  habitation 
at  Chapel  House,  Twickenham.  Their  first  child  was 
born,  but  died  at  birth,  in  April  1851,  after  which 
they  travelled  into  Italy,  meeting  the  Brownings  at 
Paris  as  they  returned  homeward.  Under  the  title 
of  "The  Daisy,"  Tennyson  has  commemorated  this 
journey  in  stanzas  of  consummate  metrical  harmony, 
with  their  beautiful  anapaestic  ripple  in  each  final 
line,  to  be  studied  by  all  who  would  understand  the 
quantitative  value  (not  merely  accentual)  of  English 
syllables  in  rhythmic  compositions — 

"  But  ere  we  reach'd  the  highest  summit 
I  pluck'd  a  daisy,  I  gave  it  you. 
It  told  of  England  then  to  me, 
And  now  it  tells  of  Italy. 

0  love,  we  two  shall  go  no  longer 
To  lands  of  summer  across  the  sea." 

Tennyson  had  at  this   time   become  the  foremost 
poet  of  his  day.     His  genius  had  been  saluted  by  the 


76  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

applause  and  admiration  of  his  contemporaries,  and 
was  now  under  the  glow  of  its  meridian.  In  a  con- 
tribution to  the  Life  of  William  Morris,1  Canon  Dixon, 
writing  of  Oxford  in  1851-53,  says : — 

"  It  is  difficult  to  the  present  generation  to  understand  the 
Tennysonian  enthusiasm  which  then  prevailed  both  in  Oxford 
and  in  the  world.  All  reading  men  were  Tennysonians  ;  all 
sets  of  reading  men  talked  poetry.  Poetry  was  the  thing ; 
and  it  was  felt  with  justice  that  this  was  due  to  Tennyson. 
He  had  invented  a  new  poetry,  a  new  poetic  English  ;  his  use 
of  words  was  new,  and  every  piece  that  he  wrote  was  a  con- 
quest of  a  new  region.  This  lasted  till  Maud,  in  1855,  which 
was  his  last  poem  that  mattered." 

This  quotation,  though  one  may  demur  to  the  final 
words,  shows  Tennyson's  position  and  the  attraction 
of  his  poetry  for  the  younger  men ;  and  his  general 
eminence  had  already  been  marked  for  public  recogni- 
tion. In  November  1850,  after  Wordsworth's  death, 
the  Laureateship  was  offered  to  Tennyson.  Lord  John 
Kussell  submitted  to  the  Queen  the  four  names  of 
Leigh  Hunt,  Sheridan  Knowles,  Henry  Taylor,  and, 
last  on  the  list,  Tennyson.  The  Prince  Consort's 
admiration  of  In  Memoriam  determined  Her  Majesty's 
choice,  which  might  seem  easy  enough  to  the  verdict 
of  the  present  day.  The  subjoined  extract  from  the 
Queen's  Secretary  is  worth  quoting,  to  show  that  the 
Laureate's  duties  were  not  intended  to  be  burdensome, 
and  that  the  offer  was  made,  as  the  letter  ended  by 
saying,  as  a  mark  of  Her  Majesty's  appreciation  of 
literary  distinction — 

"  The  ancient  duties  of  this  Office,  which  consisted  in  lauda- 
tory Odes  to  the  Sovereign,  have  been  long,  as  you  are  pro- 
bably aware,  in  abeyance,  and  have  never  been  called  for 

1  By  J.  W.  Mackail  (1899). 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  77 

during  the  Keign  of  Her  present  Majesty.  The  Queen  how- 
ever has  been  anxious  that  the  Office  should  be  maintained  ; 
first  on  account  of  its  antiquity,  and  secondly  because  it 
establishes  a  connection,  through  Her  Household,  between 
Her  Majesty  and  the  poets  of  this  country  as  a  body." l 

To  refuse  Wordsworth's  succession,  proposed  to  him 
on  such  honourable  terms,  would  have  been  difficult ; 
nevertheless  Tennyson  hesitated  until  his  acceptance 
was  determined  by  the  right  judgment  of  his  friends. 
His  accession  to  office  brought  down  upon  him,  among 
other  honoraria,  "such  shoals  of  poems  that  I  am 
almost  crazed  with  them ;  the  two  hundred  million 
poets  of  Great  Britain  deluge  me  daily.  Truly,  the 
Laureateship  is  no  sinecure."  2  For  the  inevitable 
leve'e  he  was  accommodated,  not  without  disquietude 
over  the  nether  garment,  with  the  loan  of  a  Court  suit 
from  his  ancient  brother  in  song,  Samuel  Eogers,  who 
had  declined  the  laurels  on  the  plea  of  age. 

In  1852  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  death  was  the  theme 
of  the  first  verses  published  by  the  Laureate  in  discharge 
of  his  functions.  It  is  remarkable,  and  to  some  it  may 
be  a  consoling  example  of  the  necessary  superficiality 
of  day-by-day  criticism,  that  we  find  Tennyson,  in  a 
letter  thanking  Henry  Taylor  for  a  just  and  discerning 
eulogium,  writing  that  he  is  doubly  grateful  for  it  in 
the  all  but  universal  depreciation  of  his  poem  by  the 
Press.  Yet  it  is  probably  the  best  poem  on  a  national 
event  that  has  ever  been  struck  off  by  a  Laureate 
under  the  sudden  impatient  spur  of  the  moment ; 
remembering  that  for  a  poet  of  established  reputation 
this  kind  of  improvisation  is  a  serious  ordeal.  Southey 
could  only  deplore  George  the  Third's  death  in  hexa- 

1  Memoir.  a  Memoir. 


78  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

meters  that  were  incontestably  deplorable;  and  Words- 
worth, as  Laureate,  attempted  nothing  of  the  sort. 
From  this  point  of  view  Tennyson's  success  in  the 
Wellington  Ode,  which  is  well  sustained  at  a  high 
level  of  solemn  harmony,  may  be  reckoned  unique; 
though  the  original  version,  which  must  have  been 
rapidly  composed,  was  amended  and  strengthened  in 
three  subsequent  editions.  The  intermediate  changes 
were  not  invariably  for  the  better.  Of  the  two  lines — 

"  Where  shall  we  lay  the  man  whom  we  deplore  ? 
He  died  on  Walmer's  lonely  shore  " — 

the  second  line,  which  is  perhaps  the  weakest  that 
Tennyson  ever  published,  was  inserted  in  1853,  and 
most  deservedly  ejected  in  the  following  year.  In 
the  couplet — 

"  Mourn,  for  to  us  he  seems  the  last, 
Bemembering  all  his  greatness  in  the  past," 

one  misses  with  regret  the  original  second  line — 
"  Our  sorrow  draws  but  on  the  golden  past," 

which  is  stronger  in  sound  and  feeling,  and  must  have 
been  changed  for  the  prosaic  reason  that  sorrow  for 
the  dead  can  never  draw  on  the  present.  The  key- 
note of  heroic  character  is  finely  given  in  the  lines — 

"  Not  once  or  twice  in  our  rough  island-story 
The  path  of  duty  was  the  way  to  glory." 

They  are  repeated  as  the  burden  or  lofty  moral  of  the 
poem,  and  have  taken  rank  among  the  quotations 
from  English  poetry  that  are  familiar  in  our  mouths 
as  household  words. 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  79 

The  true  successors  of  the  earlier  bards,  who 
celebrated  in  chansons  de  geste  and  in  ballads  the 
deeds  and  death  of  great  men  or  some  famous 
national  exploit,  have  been,  in  quite  modern  times, 
poets  who,  like  Campbell,  Cowper,  and  the  author  of 
The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,  spontaneously  and 
unofficially,  by  some  happy  stroke  of  genius,  seized 
upon  some  stirring  incident  of  the  time,  and  struck 
powerfully  the  right  popular  note.  That  this  has  now 
become  generally  assumed  to  be  the  vocation  of  the 
ideal  Laureate,  rather  than  the  production  of  courtly 
verse,  may  be  fairly  attributed  in  a  large  degree  to 
Tennyson,  who  evidently  so  understood  his  office,  for 
he  began  thenceforward  to  write  poems  upon  heroic 
exploits,  or  the  incidents  of  national  war.  In  this  spirit 
he  composed  The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,  a 
fine  rolling  war-chant,  with  a  thunderous  echo  in  the 
dominant  rhyme,  which  gained  hearty  applause  from 
the  British  soldiers  in  the  Crimea,  particularly  for 
the  well-known  line — "Some  one  had  blundered" 
— that  was  omitted  in  the  revised  version  of  1855. 
In  the  Defence  of  Lucknow,  an  incident  that  is 
famous  in  the  annals  of  the  Indian  Mutiny,  there 
are  passages  full  of  vigour  and  animation,  but  on 
the  whole  too  much  vehemence  and  tumultuous 
activity ;  the  poet  endeavours  to  startle  and  strike 
the  imagination  by  glowing  pictures  of  the  realities  of 
a  siege ;  he  accumulates  authentic  details,  he  tries  to 
give  us  the  scenes  and  events  with  the  roar  of  battle, 
the  terror  and  the  misery,  the  furious  assaults  and  the 
desperate  defence,  as  on  the  stage  of  a  theatre  : — 

"  Then  on  another  wild  morning  another  wild  earthquake  out- 
tore 


80  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Clean  from  our  lines  of  defence  ten  or  twelve  good  paces 

or  more. 
Rifleman,  high  on  the  roof,  hidden  there  from  the  light  of 

the  sun — 
One  has  leapt  up  on  the  breach,  crying  out :  '  Follow  me, 

follow  me  ! ' — 
Mark  him — he  falls  !  then  another,  and  him  too,  and  down 

goes  he. 
Had  they  been  bold  enough  then,  who  can  tell  but  the 

traitors  had  won  ? 
Boardings  and  rafters  and  doors — an  embrasure  !  make  way 

for  the  gun ! 
Now  double-charge  it  with  grape !     It  is  charged  and  we 

fire,  and  they  run." 

Here  is  abundance  of  fiery  animation,  but  also  too  many 
descriptive  particulars ;  and  as  the  whole  poem  is  com- 
posed in  this  manner,  it  resembles  a  vivid  narration  of 
events  in  pictorial  prose.  Such  work  hardly  lies  within 
the  compass  of  the  poetic  artist,  whose  business  it 
is  to  simplify  and  concentrate  the  general  impression  ; 
and  though  the  Defence  of  Lucknow  is  full  of 
energy  and  ardour,  one  must  pass  upon  it  the  criticism 
that  the  canvas  is  overcrowded  and  the  verse  too 
hurried  and  vehement  for  the  ballad,  or  for  the  lyric 
of  heroism,  which  is  best  when  it  gives  a  single  tragic 
situation  in  clear  outline. 

In  the  poetry  of  action  Tennyson  made  his  highest 
score  by  The  Revenge :  A  Ballad  of  the  Fleet ; 
although  even  this  spirited  poem,  with  its  note  of 
stately  and  unconquerable  valour,  hardly  attains  the 
impressive  simplicity  of  the  true  ballad ;  it  is  still  too 
circumstantial.  We  have  here  a  splendidly  versified 
narrative  of  a  sea-fight,  with  all  the  atmosphere  of 
the  winds  and  the  waves ;  it  is  a  noble  cfianson  de 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  81 

geste,  and  the  poem  ends  with  the  closing  of  the  waters 
over  the  ship  : — 

"  When  a  wind  from  the  lands  they  had  ruin'd  awoke  from 

sleep, 

And  the  water  began  to  heave  and  the  weather  to  moan, 
And  or  ever  that  evening  ended  a  great  gale  blew, 
And  a  wave  like  the  wave  that  is  raised  by  an  earthquake 

grew, 
Till  it  smote  on  their  hulls  and  their  sails  and  their  masts 

and  their  flags, 
And  the  whole  sea  plunged  and  fell  on  the  shot-shatter'd 

navy  of  Spain, 

And  the  little  Kevenge  herself  went  down  by  the  island  crags 
To  be  lost  evermore  in  the  main." 

The  distance  of  time  lends  its  enchantment  to  this 
story,  and  three  centuries  gave  Tennyson  the  right 
perspective;  he  could  throw  into  strong  relief  the 
situation  with  its  central  figure,  he  could  omit 
particulars  because  they  were  unknown ;  he  followed 
perforce  the  natural  instinct  of  popular  tradition 
which  preserves  the  broad  lines  of  heroic  character 
and  achievement,  leaving  the  rest  to  oblivion. 
Nothing  is  more  rare  in  modern  poetry  than  success 
in  heroic  verse — in  the  art  of  rendering  with  strength, 
beauty,  and  dignity  the  acts  and  emotions  of  men 
at  moments  which  string  up  their  energies  to  the 
highest  pitch,  and  bring  into  full  play  the  qualities 
of  inflexible  courage  and  endurance.  To  write  of 
battles  long  ago  is  always  hard  enough,  but  in  such 
cases  romantic  colouring  is  admissible,  and  the  lapse  of 
many  years  has  luckily  rubbed  out  all  but  the  salient 
features  of  a  great  event  or  a  daring  exploit.  When 
these  subjects  belong  to  contemporary  history,  to  the 


82  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  in. 

modern  bard's  own  lifetime,  the  task  becomes  far 
more  difficult,  and  has  foiled  poets  of  very  high 
reputation,  as  in  the  case  of  Walter  Scott,  who  has 
given  us  a  magnificent  battle  piece  of  Flodden,  but 
two  very  inferior  poems  upon  Waterloo.  You  cannot 
be  romantic  over  a  contemporary  battle  or  siege  that 
has  just  been  fully  described  in  the  newspapers,  for 
the  public  knows  exactly  what  happened ;  while  if 
you  attempt  to  be  severely  realistic  you  are  lost 
among  unmanageable  details ;  and  you  find  yourself 
emphatically  versifying  what  has  already  been  said 
with  the  effective  actuality  of  prose. 


CHAPTEE    IV 
MAUD;  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING;  ENOCH  ARDEN 

IN  August  1852  a  son  (the  present  Lord  Tennyson) 
had  been  born  in  their  house  at  Twickenham ;  and  in 
the  next  year  they  had  at  last  found  a  permanent 
abiding  place.  For  in  1853  Tennyson,  having  by  this 
time  an  income  of  £500  a  year  from  his  poems,  bought 
Farringford  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  his  favourite  habita- 
tion ever  afterwards,  within  sight  of  the  sea,  and 
within  sound  of  its  waves  in  a  storm;  with  the 
lawns,  spreading  trees,  and  meadows  running  up  to 
the  skirts  of  windy  downs,  that  have  been  frequently 
sketched  in  his  poetry,  and  will  long  be  identified  with 
his  presence.  There  he  worked,  morning  and  evening, 
at  "  Maud,"  sitting  in  his  high-backed  wooden  chair  in 
a  little  room  at  the  top  of  the  house,  and  smoking  the 
sacred  pipes  during  certain  half-hours  of  strict  seclusion 
when  his  best  thoughts  came  to  him.1 

In  1837  a  collection  of  verses  had  been  published 
under  the  title  of  The  Tribute,  signifying  that  they 
were  contributed  by  various  writers  of  repute  at  that 
time,  in  order  that  the  profits  of  a  subscription  list 
to  the  volume  might  be  offered  to  a  man  of  letters 
who  had  fallen  into  poverty.  Monckton  Milnes  wrote 
round  for  subscriptions  to  all  his  friends,  among  others 
to  Alfred  Tennyson,  who  sent  a  humorous  refusal, 

1  Memoir. 

88 


84  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

averring  that  he  had  sworn  never  to  assist  in  such 
enterprises.  Monckton  Milnes  did  not  appreciate  the 
bantering  tone  of  the  letter,  was  angered  by  the 
refusal,  and  wrote  a  sour  answer,  whereupon  Tennyson 
turned  away  his  wrath  with  good-natured  expostula- 
tion, and  sent  his  contribution.  It  is  a  short  poem 
of  passionate  lamentation  for  a  woman  who  has  been 
loved  and  is  lost ;  and  it  not  only  contains  the  theme 
upon  which  Maud  was  long  afterwards  worked  out 
dramatically,  but  the  stanzas  reappear,  with  slight 
changes  and  considerable  omissions,  in  the  twenty- 
fourth  section  of  the  later  poem ;  nor  did  Tennyson 
ever  rise  higher  in  the  elegiac  strain  than  in  some 
of  the  best  of  them  : — 

"  O  that  'twere  possible 
After  long  grief  and  pain 
To  find  the  arms  of  my  true  love 
Round  me  once  again  ! 

"  Alas  for  her  that  met  me, 
That  heard  me  softly  call, 
Came  glimmering  thro'  the  laurels 
At  the  quiet  evenfall, 
In  the  garden  by  the  turrets 
Of  the  old  manorial  hall." 1 

The  fifth  edition  of  In  Memoriam  had  been  published 
in  1852.  It  was  followed  in  1855  by  the  first  appear- 
ance of  Maud,  which  Lowell  rather  affectedly  calls  the 
antiphonal  voice  of  the  earlier  poem.  The  change  of 
subject,  tone,  and  manner  was  certainly  striking ;  and 

1  As  The  Tribute  is  now  a  very  rare  book,  it  is  worth  mention- 
ing that  this  poem,  in  its  original  form,  may  be  found  at  the 
end  of  vol.  Ixxix.  of  the  Annual  Register  (1837).  The  sub-editor 
of  the  time  was  rebuked  by  his  chief  for  having  inserted  among 
his  selections  from  the  year's  poetry  a  bit  of  trivial  verse. 


iv.]  MAUD  85 

the  public  seem  to  have  been  taken  by  surprise.  The 
transition  was  from  irremediable  sorrow  to  irresistible 
passion;  from  philosophic  meditation  to  a  romantic 
love  story  with  a  tragic  ending ;  from  stanzas  swaying 
slowly  like  a  dirge  within  their  uniform  compass,  to 
an  abundant  variety  of  metrical  movement,  according 
with  the  changes  of  scene  and  attuned  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  plot  through  ardent  courtship  to  the  lover's 
triumph,  to  detection,  a  duel,  the  frenzy  of  remorse, 
and  the  final  chant  of  liberation  from  all  these 
miserable  memories,  when  "the  old  hysterical  mock 
disease "  is  forgotten  and  overpowered  in  the  tumul- 
tuous agitation  of  a  great  national  war.  The  general 
reader  was  unfavourably  prepossessed  by  the  tone  of 
restless  despondency  that  runs  through  the  opening 
stanzas,  and  by  the  intimations  of  a  morbid  temperament, 
of  a  sickly  cast  of  thought,  which  are  given  as  the  pre- 
monitory symptoms  of  a  mind  unfitted  to  withstand 
the  shock  of  a  sudden  catastrophe.  The  light  literary 
reviewer  was  disposed  to  be  satirical  upon  a  hero 
whose  attitude  was  not  heroical;  the  higher  criti- 
cism was  divided.  The  poet  was,  in  fact,  contending 
against  a  difficulty  that  is  inseparable  from  the  form 
of  a  metrical  romance  in  which  a  single  personage 
tells  bis  own  story ;  for  while  a  skilful  novelist 
would  easily  have  sketched  such  a  character,  or  a 
playwright  might  have  brought  it  out  by  action 
and  dialogue,  yet  when  a  man  is  set  up  to  confess 
his  own  intense  sensibility,  to  describe  his  own  misery 
and  madness,  the  part  becomes  much  harder  to  manage, 
and  the  audience  is  apt  to  become  impatient  with  him. 
Nevertheless  Henry  Taylor,  Ruskin,  Jowett,  and  the 
Brownings  spoke  without  hesitation  of  the  poem's 


86  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

great  merits.  Tyndall  bought  the  volume  on  his  way 
to  a  theatre  one  evening ;  he  read  it  between  the  acts 
of  the  performance,  continued  it  outside  in  the  street, 
and  had  reached  the  end  before  he  got  home.  He 
admired  it  extremely,  and  Lord  Houghton,  who 
agreed  with  him,  exclaimed  that  the  reviewers  were 
blundering.1  Jowett  wrote  : — 

"  No  poem  since  Shakespeare  seems  to  show  equal  power  of 
the  same  kind,  or  equal  knowledge  of  human  nature.  No 
modern  poem  contains  more  lines  that  ring  in  the  ears  of  men. 
I  do  not  know  any  verse  out  of  Shakespeare  in  which  the 
ecstasy  of  love  soars  to  such  a  height." 

This  is  certainly  no  faint  praise;  and  although  the 
general  verdict  would  be  that  it  is  excessive,  we  have 
at  any  rate  the  first  impression  made  by  the  poem's 
emotional  force  upon  a  very  critical  intellect. 

"The  peculiarity  of  Maud,"  Tennyson  said,  "is 
that  different  phases  of  passion  in  one  person  take  the 
place  of  different  characters " ;  and  the  effect  of  his 
own  recitation  was  to  set  this  conception  in  clear 
relief,  by  showing  the  connection  and  significance  of 
the  linked  monodies,  combined  with  the  vivid  musical 
rendering  of  a  pathetic  love-story.  The  first  spark 
of  love  kindles  rapidly  into  heat,  and  the  emotion  rises 
by  degrees  of  intensity  to  the  rapture  of  meeting  Maud 
in  the  garden,  falling  again  suddenly  to  the  depths  of 
bitter  despair ;  until  the  luckless  youth  again  recovers 
heart  and  strength  in  the  stir  and  rumour  of  national 
war,  and  determines,  as  many  have  done  before  him, 
to  stiffen  his  nerves  by  a  course  of  energetic  activity, 
and  to  try  the  bracing  tonic  of  real  danger. 

The  poem  in  its  development  strikes  all  the  lyrical 

1  Memoir. 


iv.]  MAUD  87 

chords,  although  it  cannot  be  said  that  all  of  them  are 
touched  with  equal  skill.  Probably  the  sustained  and 
perfect  execution  of  such  a  varied  composition  would 
ba  too  arduous  a  task  for  any  artist,  since  it  is  no  easy 
matter  to  substitute,  dramatically,  different  phases  of 
passion  in  one  person  for  different  characters.  Some 
considerable  mental  agility  is  needed  to  fall  in  with 
the  rapid  changes  of  mood  and  motive  which  succeed 
each  other  within  the  compass  of  a  piece  that  is  too 
short  for  the  delineation  of  character  :  ranging  from 
melodramatic  horror  in  the  opening  stanzas  to  passion- 
ate and  joyous  melodies  in  the  middle  part,  sinking 
into  a  dolorous  wail,  rising  into  frenzy,  and  closing 
with  the  trumpet  note  of  war. 

The  Monodrama  has  in  fact  its  peculiar  difficulties  of 
execution :  the  speaker  has  to  introduce  himself,  and 
to  explain  the  situation  in  a  kind  of  indirect  narrative 
that  must  be  kept  up  to  the  lyrical  pitch  by  effort  and 
emphasis.  The  strain  of  this  necessity  is  especially 
visible  at  the  beginning  of  Maud,  because  the  story 
opens  with  the  familiar  incident  of  financial  disaster, 
and  ordinary  matters  of  fact  have  to  be  draped  in  the 
garb  of  poetry.  The  father  of  the  soliloquist  has  been 
ruined  by  the  failure  of  a  great  speculation,  which  is 
understood  to  have  enriched  Maud's  father;  and  the 
son  naturally  denounces  lying  financiers  and  mercantile 
greed  in  general,  contrasting  the  ill-gotten  luxury  of 
a  society  which  must  cheat  or  be  cheated  with  the 
hideous  misery  and  crime  of  the  poor.  If  these  be  the 
cankers  of  a  calm  world,  the  blessings  of  Peace;  if 
pickpockets,  burglars,  and  swindlers  are  to  flourish,  he 
infinitely  prefers  "  the  heart  of  the  citizen  hissing  in 
war  on  his  own  hearthstone,"  the  ardour  of  battle,  the 


88  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

supreme  struggle  that  turns  every  man  into  a  patriot 
and  a  soldier.  Clearly  the  poet  is  here  compelled  by 
the  story's  need  of  elevation,  at  this  part  of  it,  tc 
paint  in  sombre  or  startling  colours,  to  rhapsodise 
somewhat  beyond  reason,  to  overflow  with  scornful 
invective,  and  to  allow  a  solitary  youth  to  justify 
his  disgust  of  life  by  railing  at  the  degradation  and 
rottenness  of  the  world  around  him.  It  is  Locksley 
Hall  with  the  cry  of  revolt  against  modern  society 
pitched  an  octave  higher ;  and  in  the  first  and  fourth 
sections  there  is  so  much  in  this  vein  that  the  melo- 
dramatic impression  is  not  easily  shaken  off.  English- 
men at  large  hesitate  over  thunderous  denunciations, 
in  verse,  of  social  wrongs ;  and  the  sorrows  or  dis- 
appointments of  the  money  market  are  good  matter 
for  the  prose  writer,  but  hardly  for  the  poet,  who 
cannot  be  expected  to  give  the  economist  or  the 
politician  fairplay.  Questions  of  this  kind  belong  to 
the  frigid  utilitarian  order,  and  it  is  dangerous  to 
handle  them  enthusiastically. 

But  the  vision  of  Maud,  his  playmate  in  childhood, 
scatters  all  these  distempered  complainings;  and  the 
young  man  becomes  absorbed  in  the  love  of  a  beautiful 
girl.  The  wooing  and  the  winning  of  her,  the  rapid 
growth  of  a  mutual  passion,  the  stolen  meetings,  the 
plighting  of  troth,  the  ecstasy  of  his  adoration,  the 
waiting  for  her  in  the  garden  after  a  ball,  are  told  in 
a  series  of  exquisite  lyrics,  of  which  it  may  be  said 
that  the  English  language  contains  none  better  than 
the  very  best  of  them.  The  subtle  influences  of  sight 
and  sound,  of  dawn  and  twilight, 

"  the  voice  of  the  long  sea  wave  as  it  swelled 
Now  and  then  in  the  dim  grey  dawn," 


IV.]  MAUD  89 

the  call  of  the  birds  in  the  high  Hall  garden,  the 
spreading  cedar,  the  glance  of  an  evening  sun  over 
the  dark  moorland,  the  chilly  white  mist  falling  like 
a  shroud,  mingle  with  and  heighten  the  romance  of 
their  secret  love  passages,  and  bring  shadowy  pre- 
sentiments of  danger.  The  stars  shine  brighter  as  he 
looks  at  them  and  thinks  of  his  sleeping  lady : — 

"  But  now  by  this  my  love  has  closed  her  sight 
And  given  false  death  her  hand,  and  stol'n  away 
To  dreamful  wastes  where  footless  fancies  dwell 
Among  the  fragments  of  the  golden  day. 

And  ye  meanwhile  far  over  moor  and  fell 
Beat  to  the  noiseless  music  of  the  night ! 
Has  our  whole  earth  gone  nearer  to  the  glow 
Of  your  soft  splendours  that  you  look  so  bright  ? 
Beat,  happy  stars,  timing  with  things  below, 
Beat  with  my  heart  more  blest  than  heart  can  tell, 
Blest,  but  for  some  dark  undercurrent  woe." 

Yet  the  poet  is  still  hampered  by  the  necessity  of 
explaining  his  plot,  and  of  describing  the  dramatis 
personce  through  the  mouth  of  a  single  actor ;  and  so 
the  sensitive  lover  has  to  tell  of  his  meeting  with  the 
young  lord,  his  rival,  who, 

"  Leisurely  tapping  a  glossy  boot, 
And  curving  a  contumelious  lip, 
Gorgonised  me  from  head  to  foot 
With  a  stony  British  stare." 

This  sharp  figure-drawing,  almost  caricature,  would  be 
excellent  in  a  novel  or  upon  the  stage ;  but  when  it  is 
interposed  among  tender  idyllic  melodies  there  is  a  jar 
upon  the  delicate  ear ;  there  is  a  lapse  into  undignified 
expression  which  is  incompatible  with  the  refined 
exaltation  of  tone  that  is  essential  to  a  romantic 


90  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

passion-play.  In  his  beautiful  song  of  rapturous 
expectation,  "Come  into  the  garden,  Maud,"  the  poet 
rises  to  the  highest  point  of  his  verse  just  when  the 
drama  reaches  its  climax ;  for  the  end  of  the  romance 
has  come,  and  the  whole  pageantry  of  lovemaking 
vanishes  like  a  dream.  The  lovers  are  detected,  there 
is  a  furious  quarrel,  a  fatal  duel ;  and  the  unfortunate 
hero  is  next  found,  mad  with  despair  and  remorse,  on 
the  coast  of  Brittany. 

The  first  title  proposed  for  the  poem  was  "  Maud 
and  the  Madness";  and  a  leading  specialist  for  in- 
sanity wrote  that  it  was  the  most  faithful  representa- 
tion of  madness  since  Shakespeare.1  Such  a  certificate 
is  but  of  moderate  value  in  poetry,  where  success 
depends  on  artistic  treatment  of  the  subject ;  and  in 
Shakespeare  the  disease  is  never  more  than  an  acces- 
sory to  the  delineation  of  his  principal  characters. 
Hamlet  was  mad  only  when  he  chose  to  be  so ;  nor  is 
it  possible  to  agree  with  Tennyson  when  he  said,  in 
alluding  to  some  captious  reviews,  that  "without  the 
prestige  of  Shakespeare  Hamlet  (if  it  came  out  now) 
would  be  treated  in  just  the  same  way"  by  incom- 
petent critics.  The  two  characters,  Hamlet  and  Maud's 
lover,  will  not  bear  a  moment's  comparison  from  any 
point  of  view.  But  delirium  is  far  less  manageable  in 
a  poem  than  in  a  play,  where  violent  scenes  and 
speeches  are  admissible ;  apd  if  we  allow  for  this  inevit- 
able difficulty  of  execution,  it  may  be  agreed  that  the 
wandering  incoherent  mind  of  Maud's  lover  in  his 
madness  is  effectively  rendered.  The  final  strophes 
of  the  poem  have  some  strenuous  and  animated  lines, 
representing  a  puissant  nation  rising  boldly  to  the 
alarm  of  war,  which  is  to  purge  the  people  of  sloth 
1  Memoir. 


iv.]  MAUD  91 

and  mean  cupidity,  and  to  unite  them  in  one  patriotic 
impulse.  Some  such  notions  of  fighting  as  a  -whole- 
some restorative  had  been  engendered,  in  1855,  among 
home-keeping  Englishmen  by  forty  years  of  peace; 
but  since  that  time  they  have  learnt  by  experience 
what  war  really  signifies;  and  the  belief  that  it  is 
a  good  medicine  for  the  cankers  of  plethoric  prosperity 
must  now  have  fallen  considerably  out  of  fashion.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  in  the  Quarterly  Review  of  1855,  protested 
against  the  doctrine  that  war  is  a  cure  for  moral  evil, 
or  that  it  is  a  specific  for  the  particular  evil  of 
Mammon  worship.  He  maintained,  on  the  contrary, 
that  modern  war  is  a  remarkable  incentive  to  that 
worship ;  though  Tennyson  might  have  replied  that  in 
Milton's  great  council  of  war  Mammon's  speech  is 
ignobly  pacific.  There  is  at  any  rate  a  curious  adum- 
bration of  recent  incidents  in  one  sentence  of  this 
article,  where  it  is  said  that  "war  in  its  moral  opera- 
tion resembles,  perhaps,  more  than  anything  else  the 
finding  of  a  gold-field."  Mr.  Gladstone,  however,  con- 
siderably qualified  his  first  adverse  judgment  in  a  note 
(dated  1878)  that  he  appended  to  this  article  when  it 
was  republished  in  his  Gleanings  of  Past  Years — 

"  Whether  it  is  to  be  desired  that  a  poem  should  require 
from  common  men  a  good  deal  of  effort  in  order  to  compre- 
hend it ;  whether  all  that  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
Soliloquist  in  '  Maud '  is  within  the  lines  of  poetical  verioimili- 
tude  ;  whether  this  poem  has  the  full  moral  equilibrium  which 
is  so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the  sister-works  ;  are  questions 
open,  perhaps,  to  discussion.  But  I  have  neither  done  justice 
in  the  text  to  its  rich  and  copious  beauties  of  detail,  nor  to  its 
great  lyrical  and  metrical  power.  And  what  is  worse,  I  have 
failed  to  comprehend  rightly  the  relation  between  particular 
passages  in  the  poem  and  its  general  scope.  This  is,  I  con- 
ceive, not  to  set  forth  any  coherent  strain,  but  to  use  for 


92  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

poetical  ends  all  the  moods  and  phases  allowable  under  the 
laws  of  the  art,  in  a  special  form  of  character,  which  is  im- 
passioned, fluctuating,  and  ill-grounded.  The  design,  which 
seems  to  resemble  that  of  the  Ecclesiastes  in  another  sphere, 
is  arduous ;  but  Mr.  Tennyson's  power  of  execution  is  probably 
nowhere  greater." 

The  allusion  to  Ecclesiastes  is  enigmatic,  for  the 
Preacher  deals  with  neither  love  nor  war,  and  his 
theme  is  that  all  luxury,  pleasure,  and  the  delight  of 
the  senses,  are  but  vexation  and  vanity.  If  any  re- 
semblance with  Tennyson's  poetry  is  to  be  found  in 
Ecclesiastes,  it  should  be  with  the  Palace  of  Art.1 

In  the  same  article  it  is  observed,  truly,  that  Tenny- 
son's war  poetry  is  not  equal  to  his  poetry  of  peace. 
One  may  add  that  neither  irony,  nor  fierce  invective, 
suits  Tennyson's  genius  very  well;  they  carry  him 
too  near  to  the  perilous  domain  of  rhetoric.  It  is  to 
the  lays  of  love  and  heartrending  lamentation  in 
Maud,  with  their  combined  intensity  and  refinement, 
that  unqualified  praise  may  be  accorded,  to  their 
romantic  grace  and  their  soft  cadences,  in  which  the 
melody  seems  inseparable  from  the  meaning. 

For  Onomatopoeia,  which  began  by  direct  imitation 

1  Ecclesiastes  ii.  4,  5,  6,  8,  11 — 

"  I  made  me  great  works  ;  I  builded  me  houses ;  I  planted 
me  vineyards : 

"I  gathered  me  also  silver  and  gold,  and  the  peculiar  treasure 
of  kings  and  of  the  provinces  :  I  gat  me  men  singers  and  women 
singers,  and  the  delights  of  the  sons  of  men,  as  musical  instru- 
ments, and  that  of  all  sorts. 

"  Then  I  looked  on  all  the  works  that  my  hands  had  wrought, 
and  on  the  labour  that  I  had  laboured  to  do  :  and,  behold,  all 
was  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit,  and  there  was  no  profit 
under  the  sun." 


iv.]  MAUD  93 

of  natural  sounds,  has  been  developed  by  the  highest 
art  of  poetry  into  prolonged  associations  of  sound  and 
sense.  A  single  line  may  set  the  ear  listening;  it 
stirs  the  memory  by  recalling  what  has  been  once 
heard,  or  by  making  the  words  echo  their  significance, 
as  for  example  in 

"  By  the  long  wash  of  Australasian  seas." 
And  the  subtle  sensibility  that  adapts  the  word  to  the 
thing  adapts  the  sentence  or  cadence  to  the  general 
meaning  or  spirit  of  a  whole  passage,1  reviving  the 
impression  of  a  summer  dawn  in  a  garden,  the  scent 
of  flowers,  "the  voice  of  the  long  sea  wave."  Kecita- 
tion  is  a  better  test  of  these  qualities  than  reading,  for 
all  poetry  may  be  said  to  make  its  primary  appeal  to 
the  ear ;  and  even  the  length  of  the  lines  must  have 
formed  itself  to  a  great  degree  on  the  natural  con- 
ditions of  respiration  and  oral  delivery.  It  is  versifica- 
tion regularly  accentuated,  with  the  terminal  rhyme 
marking  each  line's  end  harmoniously,  that  now  chiefly 
delights  the  English  ear,  fixing  the  measure  by  a  recur- 
rent chime,  a  beautiful  invention  that  is  nevertheless  a 
comparatively  recent  importation  into  European  verse. 
In  our  earliest  poetry  the  place  of  the  accents  was 
indicated  by  alliteration;  while  since  there  was  no 
terminal  bar,  the  line's  length  might  be  varied  at  the 
composer's  discretion.  Some  of  the  cantos  in  Maud 
seem  to  have  been  so  far  constructed  on  a  similar 
principle,  that  the  lines  vary  considerably  in  length, 
and  the  rhyme  is  sounded  with  remarkable  skill 
at  irregular  intervals,  marking  fluctuations  of  emo- 
tion. We  have  here,  in  fact,  something  resembling 

1  See  a  dissertation  on  Onomatopoeia  in  Jowett's  Plato,  vol.  i. 
p.  310. 


94  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

what  is  called  in  France  the  Vers  lAbre,  manipu- 
lated by  a  master  of  harmonies — a  metrical  arrange- 
ment of  which,  though  it  is  no  innovation  in 
our  poetry,  Tennyson  has  made  superior  use.  For 
although  Southey  discarded  regularity  of  length  in 
the  verse  of  Thalaba  and  Kehama,  the  prevailing  form 
in  those  poems  is  the  ten-syllable  blank  verse  metre, 
varied  by  shorter  iambic  lines,  with  a  correctness  of 
scansion  that  becomes  monotonous.  In  Maud  the 
poet  by  no  means  despises  alliteration;  he  is  rather 
apt  to  overstrain  it  occasionally  as  a  method  of  en- 
forcing the  sense  of  a  line  by  its  sound,  and  of 
weighting  its  accentuation. 

"  The  shrill-edged  shriek  of  a  mother  divides  the  shuddering 
night." 

"  And  out  he  walked  when  the  wind  like  a  broken  worldling 
wailed." 

But  the  value  of  his  experiment  comes  from  his 
dexterity  in  expanding  the  undulating  flexibility  of 
the  old  English  free  verse,  with  the  rhymes  interposed 
as  an  accompaniment  to  the  metre,  and  falling  on  the 
expectant  ear  like  the  chime  of  bells.  Nor  do  we  ever 
detect  in  Tennyson,  as  we  do  too  often  in  Browning, 
the  insincere  or  superfluous  phrase  that  is  brought 
in  for  the  rhyme's  sake,  and  is  accommodated  with 
more  or  less  dexterity  to  the  poet's  real  intention. 
Throughout  his  poetry  we  have  constantly  reason  to 
admire  his  resource  and  capacity  for  shaping  metrical 
forms  to  suit  the  impression  that  he  desires  to  convey ; 
while  in  such  pieces  as  The  Talking  Oak  we  may 
appreciate  the  light  and  delicate  touch  of  his  hand 
upon  the  standard  customary  metres  of  our  language. 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  95 

Having  by  this  time  taken  up  his  settled  quarters 
at  Farringford,  Tennyson  was  now  seriously  occupied 
with  his  work  upon  the  Arthurian  legends,  which 
had  already  furnished  him  with  material  for  some  of 
the  best  among  his  minor  poems.  Two  Idylls  were 
in  print  by  1857,  and  in  1859  the  first  four  were 
published.  The  poet  then  took  ship  for  Lisbon,  whence 
he  contemplated  a  journey  into  southern  Spain ;  but 
he  was  an  impatient  traveller,  who  loved  above 
all  things  his  own  land,  not  largely  endued  with 
the  much-enduring  temper  of  his  Ulysses ;  so  the 
autumnal  heat  and  the  mosquitoes  drove  him  back  to 
England  within  a  month.  Meanwhile,  the  Idylls  were 
rapidly  and  widely  taken  up  by  the  English  public, 
with  many  congratulations  from  personal  friends. 
Thackeray  sends,  after  reading  them,  a  letter  full  of 
his  characteristic  humour  and  good-fellowship — 

"The  landlord — at  Folkestone — gave  two  bottles  of  his 
claret,  and  I  think  I  drank  the  most ;  and  here  I  have  been 
lying  back  in  the  chair  and  thinking  of  those  delightful  Idylls, 
my  thoughts  being  turned  to  you  ;  and  what  could  I  do  but 
be  grateful  to  that  surprising  genius  which  has  made  me  so 
happy." 

Jowett  wrote  enthusiastically  of  the  "Maid  of 
Astolat  "— 

"  There  are  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  all  ages,  men  as  well 
as  women,  who,  although  they  have  not  died  for  love  (have  no 
intention  of  doing  so),  will  find  there  a  sort  of  ideal  consolation 
of  their  own  troubles  and  remembrances." 

The  Duke  of  Argyll's  praise  is  slightly,  though 
unintentionally,  ambiguous.  "Your  Idylls  of  the 
King,"  he  tells  the  author,  "will  be  understood  and 
admired  by  many  who  are  incapable  of  understanding 


96  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  appreciating  many  others  of  your  works."  He 
goes  on — 

"  Macaulay  is  certainly  not  a  man  incapable  of  understanding 
anything,  but  I  knew  that  his  tastes  in  poetry  were  so  formed 
in  another  line  that  I  considered  him  a  good  test,  and  three 
days  ago  I  gave  him  '  Guinevere ' " 

with  the  result  that  Macaulay  was  "  delighted  with  it." 
Upon  this  Tennyson  responds  to  His  Grace  somewhat 
caustically — 

"  MY  DEAR  DTJKE, — Doubtless  Macaulay's  good  opinion  is 
worth  having,  and  I  am  grateful  to  you  for  letting  me  know 
it,  but  this  time  I  intend  to  be  thick-skinned  ;  nay,  I  scarcely 
believe  that  I  should  ever  feel  very  deeply  the  pen-punctures 
of  those  parasitic  animalcules  of  the  press,  if  they  kept  them- 
selves to  what  I  write,  and  did  not  glance  spitefully  and 
personally  at  myself.  I  hate  spite." 1 


Folklore  has  rarely  undergone  such  changes  of 
style  and  transformations  of  environment  in  its 
passage  through  different  countries  and  successive 
generations,  as  the  Arthurian  legend  has  exhibited 
from  its  origin  among  the  Celts  of  insular  Britain 
to  its  latest  revival  in  modern  English  poetry.  The 
lays  and  tales  of  Arthur  and  his  knights,  the  relics 
of  a  large  number  that  have  been  lost,  were  saved 
from  oblivion  in  England  by  the  Anglo-Normans, 
whose  poetic  instinct  led  them  to  enjoy  in  their 
courts  and  castles  the  songs  of  wandering  minstrels 
and  popular  stories  of  marvellous  adventure.  Thus 
the  primitive  element  took  a  Romanesque  fashion, 
and  was  expanded  in  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  chivalry  ; 
the  legends  were  translated  into  French  and  English, 

1  All  these  quotations  are  taken  from  the  Memoir. 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  97 

until  at  last  they  were  gathered  together  and  fixed 
permanently  in  an  English  form  when  Caxton  printed 
Sir  Thomas  Malory's  collection.  A  whole  cycle  sur- 
rounds the  central  figure  of  King  Arthur,  whom  one 
may  conjecture  to  have  embodied  the  true  tradition  of 
some  valiant  chief  who  fought  hard  for  his  lands  and 
his  people  against  the  Saxon  invaders ;  for  in  a  pre- 
historic age  it  is  the  real  hero,  famous  when  he  lived, 
who  becomes  fabulous  after  his  death.  And  so  Arthur 
emerged  out  of  a  period  of  darkest  confusion,  trail- 
ing after  him  Christian  myths  and  heroic  legends; 
he  passed  through  wandering  minstrelsy  to  prose 
romance,  and  then  again  into  poetry  when  he  became 
the  portrait,  in  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen,  of  a  brave 
knight  perfected  in  the  twelve  moral  virtues,  the 
leading  actor  in  an  allegory  that  is  supposed  to  teach 
morals  and  politics  under  a  transparent  masque  of 
adventurous  knight-errantry. 

"  The  generall  end,  therefore,  of  all  the  book  is  to  fashion  a 
gentleman  or  noble  person  in  virtuous  and  gentle  discipline, 
which  for  that  I  conceived  shoulde  be  more  plausible  and 
pleasing,  being  coloured  into  an  historical  fiction,  the  which 
the  mosC  part  of  men  delight  to  read,  rather  for  variety  of 
matter  than  for  profite  of  the  ensample,  I  chose  the  historye  of 
King  Arthur,  as  most  fit  for  the  excellency  of  his  person,  being 
made  famous  by  many  men's  former  works,  and  also  furthest 
from  the  daunger  of  envy  and  suspicion  of  the  present  time." 1 

During  the  classical  and  rationalistic  period  of 
eighteenth -century  poetry  King  Arthur's  romantic 
figure  suffered  eclipse,  until  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century  Malory's  book  was  republished.  And  lastly 
he  shone  out  again  fifty  years  later  in  the  Idylls, 

1  Spenser's  "  Letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh"  (1589). 

a 


98  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

modelled  by  Tennyson  after  the  type  used  by  Spenser, 
as  the  image  of  lofty  morality,  the  modern  gentleman, 
the  magnanimous  husband  of  an  unworthy  queen.  As 
Spenser  dedicated  his  poem  to  "Elizabeth,  by  the 
Grace  of  God,  Queen  of  England,  France,  and  Ireland 
and  Virginia,"  so  Tennyson  offered  the  Idylls  as  his 
tribute  to  the  Sovereign  of  far  wider  dominions : — 

"  But  thou,  my  Queen, 
Not  for  itself,  but  thro'  thy  living  love 
For  one  to  whom  I  made  it  o'er  his  grave 
Sacred,  accept  this  old  imperfect  tale, 
New- old,  and  shadowing  Sense  at  war  with  Soul, 
Ideal  manhood  closed  in  real  man, 
Rather  than  that  gray  king,  whose  name,  a  ghost, 
Streams  like  a  cloud,  man-shaped,  from  mountain  peak, 
And  cleaves  to  cairn  and  cromlech  still ;  or  him 
Of  Geoffrey's  book,  or  him  of  Malleor's,  one 
Touch'd  by  the  adulterous  finger  of  a  time 
That  hover'd  between  war  and  wantonness." 

Thus  Arthur  is  still  a  poet's  ideal  and  illustration  of 
unstained  virtue  and  manliness,  with  the  difference 
that  his  environment  of  fairyland,  enchantments, 
and  adventurous  gallantry,  has  become  much  more 
strange  to  modern  readers  than  it  was  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  when  Spenser  used  the  conventional  romantic 
style  and  apparatus  that  were  current  in  his  day. 
Arthur  does  not  even  represent,  in  dim  outline,  the 
lineaments  of  some  famous  historical  personage,  like 
Charlemagne  or  even  Roland ;  he  is  an  unsubstantial 
and  almost  wholly  fabulous  model  of  chivalric  perfec- 
tion; the  Round  Table,  the  Knights  errant,  Merlin, 
the  Holy  Grail,  are  employed  as  the  framework  of  a 
picture  restored  and  repainted ;  the  costumes  and 
scenery  of  the  drama  are  antique,  with  a  revised 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  99 

version  of  the  characters.  A  modern  romance  of 
chivalry  is  necessarily  a  restoration,  with  the  details 
of  character,  circumstance,  and  manners  reproduced, 
as  in  Scott's  romances,  more  or  less  accurately  from 
the  surviving  records  of  the  time.  In  the  case  of  the 
Arthurian  idylls  this  accessory  work  could  not  be  done, 
because  authentic  materials  are  entirely  wanting ;  the 
scenes,  personages,  and  situations  are  either  mythical, 
or  at  most  reflect  later  mediaeval  ideas  and  types.  To 
a  certain  extent  this  has  been  a  drawback  upon  the 
popularity  of  a  brilliant  poetic  enterprise ;  for  it  was 
inevitable  that  upon  the  critical,  naturalistic,  exact- 
ing temper  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  its  third 
quarter  the  Idylls  should  have  produced  some  feeling 
of  incongruousness,  of  perfection  in  art  with  a  lack  of 
actuality — an  impression  of  the  kind  that  is  delicately 
conveyed  in  a  letter  from  Ruskin  to  Tennyson  soon 
after  the  publication  of  the  new  poems.  The  four 
songs  seemed  to  him  the  jewels  of  the  crown,  and 
certain  passages  he  reckoned  to  be  "  finer  than  almost 
all  you  have  done  yet.  Nevertheless  "  (he  went  on), 
"  I  am  not  sure  but  I  feel  the  art  and  finish  in  these  poems 
a  little  more  than  I  like  to  feel  it.  Yet  I  am  not  a  fair  judge 
quite,  for  I  am  so  much  of  a  realist  as  not  by  any  possibility 
to  interest  myself  much  in  an  unreal  subject,  to  feel  it  as  I 
should,  and  the  very  sweetness  and  stateliness  of  the  words 
strike  nie  all  the  more  as  pure  workmanship.  .  .  .  Treasures 
of  wisdom  there  are  in  it,  and  word-painting  such  as  never 
was  yet  for  concentration,  nevertheless  it  seems  to  me  that  so 
great  power  ought  not  to  be  spent  on  visions  of  things  past, 
but  on  the  living  present.  For  one  hearer  capable  of  feeling 
the  depth  of  this  poem,  I  believe  ten  would  feel  a  depth  quite 
as  great  if  the  stream  flowed  through  things  nearer  the  hearer. 
...  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  intense,  masterful,  and  un- 
erring transcript  of  an  actuality,  and  the  relation  of  a  story  of 


100  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

any  real  human  life  as  a  poet  would  watch  and  analyse  it, 
would  make  all  men  feel  more  or  less  what  poetry  was,  as  they 
felt  what  Life  and  Fate  were  in  their  instant  workings." 1 

Ruskin  here  touches  and  indicates  a  line  of  criticism 
upon  the  general  conception  of  the  Idylls,  as  shown  by 
their  treatment  of  the  Arthurian  legends,  with  which, 
although  some  may  pronounce  it  inadequate,  many 
may  be  disposed  to  agree.  Romance-writing  has  been 
defined,  half  seriously,  as  the  art  of  producing  the 
literary  work  that  can  give  the  greatest  imaginative 
pleasure  to  a  people  in  the  actual  state  of  their  habits 
and  beliefs.  The  Idylls  adapted  the  mythical  tales 
of  the  Round  Table  to  the  very  highest  standard  of 
aesthetic  taste,  intellectual  refinement,  and  moral  deli- 
cacy then  prevailing  in  cultivated  English  society ;  and 
by  that  society  they  were  very  cordially  appreciated. 
Undoubtedly  the  figure  of  Arthur — representing  a 
warrior-king  endowed  with  the  qualities  of  unselfish- 
ness, clemency,  generosity,  and  noble  trustfulness,  yet 
betrayed  by  his  wife  and  his  familiar  friend,  forgiving 
her,  and  going  forth  to  die  in  a  lost  fight  against 
treacherous  rebels — has  a  grandeur  and  a  pathos  that 
might  well  affect  a  gravely  emotional  people.  More- 
over, the  poem  is  a  splendidly  illuminated  Morality, 
unfolding  scenes  and  incidents  that  illustrate  heroic 
virtues  and  human  frailties,  gallantry,  sore  tempta- 
tions, domestic  perfidy,  chaste  virginal  love,  and  subtle 
amorous  enchantments.  It  abounds  also  in  descriptive 
passages  which  attest  the  close  attention  of  the  poet's 
ear  and  eye  to  natural  sights  and  sounds,  and  his  rare 
faculty  of  fashioning  his  verse  to  their  colours  and 
echoes.  In  short,  to  quote  from  the  Memoir : — 
1  Memoir. 


IV.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  101 

"He  has  made  these  old  legends  his  own,  restored  the 
idealism,  infused  into  them  a  spirit  of  modern  thought  and 
of  ethical  significance ;  setting  his  characters  in  a  rich  and 
varied  landscape." 

This  indeed  he  has  done  well.  And  yet  these  archaic 
stories,  as  they  are  told  in  Malory's  fifteenth-century 
English,  which  preserves  the  romantic  flavour,  have 
never  lost  their  hold  on  the  English  world  at  large.  In 
their  latest  form  they  have  to  contend  with  the  modern 
prejudice  against  unreality,  against  the  sense  that  we 
have  here  a  vision  not  merely  of  things  that  are  past, 
but  of  things  that  could  never  have  been,  of  a  world 
that  is  neither  ancient  nor  modern,  but  a  fairyland 
peopled  with  knights  and  dames  whose  habits  and 
conversation  are  adjusted  to  the  decorous  manners  of 
our  nineteenth  century.  In  Malory's  time  the  legends 
were  apparently  regarded  by  the  ordinary  reader  as 
belonging  to  what  we  should  call  the  Romance  of 
History,  for  Caxton  relates  that  he  was  much  pressed 
"  to  emprynte  the  noble  history  of  the  Saynt  Graal  and 
that  most  renowned  crysten  king,  Arthur, "but  that  he 
long  hesitated  because  of  the  opinion  that  all  such 
books  as  had  been  made  of  Arthur  had  been  "but 
fayned  and  fabled."  Yet  when  Malory's  book  was 
reprinted  in  1634,  the  editor  indignantly  reproved,  in 
his  preface,  the  incredulity  and  stupidity  of  those 
who  deny  or  make  doubt  of  Arthur's  immortal  name 
and  fame ;  and  as  to  the  manner  of  writing,  he  affirmed 
that  he  has  only  corrected  it  where  "King  Arthur 
and  some  of  his  knights  were  declared  to  swear 
prophane  and  use  superstitious  speeches."  The  tradi- 
tion was  still  regarded  as  not  wholly  fictitious,  with 
the  charm  of  antique  diction  hanging  about  it  to 


102  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

encourage  the  illusion;  and  marvels  and  miracles, 
gods  and  giants,  were  commonly  accepted  with  a 
kind  of  half  belief  by  readers  who  took  little  account 
of  the  Improbable  or  the  Unnatural.  But  this 
conventional  understanding  has  long  disappeared; 
the  conceptions  are  now  universally  admitted  to  be 
" f ay ned  and  fabled";  and  it  has  become  much  more 
difficult  to  use  the  old  legends  as  mere  vehicles  for 
new  manners  and  ideas  than  it  was  to  translate  the 
Celtic  folklore  into  the  language  of  mediaeval  romance. 
Spenser's  Fairy  Queen  was  frankly  allegorical;  and 
if  we  regard  the  Idylls  also  as  beautiful  allegories, 
we  may  be  content,  as  their  author  was,  with  his 
suggestion  that  King  Arthur  represents  conscience, 
and  that  the  poem  is  a  picture  of  the  different  ways 
in  which  men  looked  on  conscience,  some  reverencing 
it  as  a  heaven-born  king,  others  ascribing  to  it  an 
earthly  origin — a  philosophical  argument  set  forth  in 
a  parable.  We  may  then  be  satisfied  with  learning, 
from  the  poet  himself,  that  "  Camelot,  for  instance, 
a  city  of  shadowy  palaces,  is  everywhere  symbolical  of 
the  gradual  growth  of  human  beliefs  and  institutions, 
and  of  the  spiritual  development  of  man."  Symbolism 
is  an  instrument  by  which  the  severe  and  peremptory 
dictates  of  formal  philosophy  or  religion  are  softened 
down  and  shaped  for  poetic  expression ;  and  in  the 
light  of  this  interpretation  the  Idylls  are  seen  to  be  a 
finely  woven  tissue  of  figurative  mysticism,  clothing 
the  antique  forms  with  fresh  esoteric  meaning. 

"The  Holy  Grail,"  said  Tennyson,  "is  one  of  the 
most  imaginative  of  my  poems.  I  have  expressed  there 
my  strong  feeling  as  to  the  reality  of  the  Unseen " ; 
and  truly  in  no  other  Idyll  does  the  spiritual  signi- 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  103 

ficance  stand  out  so  clearly :  it  is  the  most  successful 
of  his  excursions  into  this  field  of  allegorical  romance. 
From  the  same  point  of  view  we  may  admire  and 
interpret,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  whole  collection, 
though  it  must  be  remarked  that  stories  with  a  moral 
lesson,  however  beautifully  told,  are  not  precisely 
allegories.  Moreover,  Tennyson  has  also  said  that 
"there  is  no  single  fact  or  incident  in  the  Idylls, 
however  seemingly  mystical,  which  cannot  be  ex- 
plained without  any  mystery  or  allegory  whatever," 
and  he  constantly  protested  against  pressing  too  far 
the  search  for  an  inner  meaning ;  he  would  not  admit 
an  obligation  to  find  it  everywhere.  He  would  have 
probably  accepted  the  theory  that  his  poem  should 
be  treated  as  a  renewed  presentation  of  the  tragic 
experience  of  life,  where  men  and  women  pay  the 
inevitable  penalty  of  sin  and  vice ;  and  where  never- 
theless the  highest  nobility  of  character  will  not 
always  ward  off  unmerited  disaster  and  final  cata- 
strophe. The  legend  of  a  king's  ruin  through  his 
wife's  infidelity  is  an  ancient  tale  of  wrong,  that  has 
stamped  itself  on  the  popular  imagination  by  its 
dramatic  force  and  the  contrast  of  characters.  Arthur 
the  King,  Lancelot  the  chief  warrior  of  his  host, 
Guinevere  the  peerless  beauty  who  brings  discord 
between  them,  Modred  the  traitor  knight,  represent 
personages  that  belong  to  epic  and  romance  in  various 
distant  ages  and  countries;  the  traitor  meets  his 
punishment,  but  the  hero  perishes  unhappily.  Such 
was  the  lesson  of  the  primitive  story-teller,  from 
Homer  downward,  who  drew  life  from  natural  experi- 
ence, not  as  it  is  seen  through  the  romantic  colouring 
of  a  softer  moralising  age.  And  the  same  lesson  is  to 


104  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

be  read  in  the  Idylls,  although  the  action  of  the  drama, 
the  conduct  and  character  of  the  leading  personages, 
are  applied  and  brought  home  to  the  modern  reader 
by  so  far  readjusting  them  as  to  bring  them  nearer 
to  the  feelings  and  proprieties  of  the  present  day. 
They  are  made  more  probable  in  order  that  they 
may  be  more  impressive  ;  the  poet  has  preserved  the 
ideals,  clothing  them  in  new  conventional  garments. 

That  Tennyson  could  excel  in  the  art  of  veiling 
an  experience  of  all  ages  under  an  allegory  we  know 
from  his  short  poem  the  Lady  of  Shalott,  where 
the  mirror  of  the  shadows  of  the  passing  world,  and 
the  magic  web  that  the  lady  weaves  wearily,  are 
brought  in  to  give  an  atmosphere  of  mystery  to  the 
story  of  the  Maid  of  Astolat's  hopeless  passion  for 
Lancelot.  But  in  the  Idyll  of  Lancelot  and  Elaine  the 
treatment  is  no  longer  mysterious  but  naturalistic; 
we  have  the  maiden's  timid  adoration  of  the  magni- 
ficent knight,  the  grief  and  trouble  of  her  father  and 
brothers,  and  the  Queen's  angry  jealousy  at  hearing 
that  Lancelot  is  wearing  the  maiden's  token.  The 
shy  sweetness  of  Elaine,  who  is  dying  of  unrequited 
love,  is  contrasted  with  the  figure  of  the  superb 
imperious  Guinevere,  who  scorns  her  husband,  "a 
moral  child  without  the  craft  to  rule,"  and  sharply 
suspects  her  paramour.  Lancelot  offers"  her  the 
diamonds  which  he  has  won  with  a  sore  wound  at  a 
tournament,  and  she  flings  them  out  of  her  window 
into  the  river,  just  as  the  barge  with  the  dead  Maid  of 
Astolat  comes  floating  down  before  the  palace.  This 
incident  has  a  distant  resemblance  to  some  drama 
of  modern  society,  and,  indeed,  the  moral  of  this  Idyll 
is  so  plain  as  to  need  no  allegorical  interpretation ;  it 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  105 

is  a  true  parable  and  warning  for  men  and  women 
always  and  everywhere.  The  Idyll  interweaves  some 
magnificent  embroidery  upon  the  unvarnished  canvas 
of  the  old  romance ;  it  contains  the  plaintive  song — 

"  Sweet  is  true  love  tho'  given  in  vain,  in  vain  ; 
And  sweet  is  death  who  puts  an  end  to  pain" — 

the  sighing  of  innocent  love  sinking  to  quiet  despair — 
with  many  passages  of  tender  grace  and  animating 
imagery — 

"  They  couch'd  their  spears  and  prick'd  their  steeds,  and  thus, 
Their  plumes  driVn  backward  by  the  wind  they  made 
In  moving,  all  together  down  upon  him 
Bare,  as  a  wild  wave  in  the  wide  North-sea 
Green-glimmering  toward  the  summit,  bears,  with  all 
Its  stormy  crests  that  smoke  against  the  skies, 
Down  on  a  bark,  and  overbears  the  bark, 
And  hun  that  helms  it,  so  they  overbore 
Sir  Lancelot  and  his  charger." 

At  the  central  situation  and  catastrophe  of  the 
Arthurian  epic  we  have  a  still  more  remarkable 
reconstruction  of  plot  and  character.  In  the  old 
chronicle,  when  Lancelot  and  Guinevere  are  at  last 
entrapped  and  beset,  the  knight  fights  his  way  out, 
and  the  Queen  is  condemned  by  her  husband  to  be 
burnt  alive,  but  is  rescued  by  Lancelot  after  much 
bloodshed;  and  the  great  war  begins  in  which  the 
whole  Table  Round  is  dissolved.  Lancelot  surrenders 
the  Queen  to  King  Arthur,  who  takes  her  back  as 
Menelaus  took  Helen  back  to  Lacedaemon ;  there  is  the 
same  sentiment  of  a  woman's  comparative  irresponsi- 
bility when  fierce  warriors  are  contending  for  her ;  and 
Guinevere  does  not  become  a  nun  until  Arthur  has 


106  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

been  slain  in  the  last  battle.  The  sympathy  of  the 
chronicle  is  entirely  with  Guinevere — 

"  Therefore,  all  ye  that  be  lovers,  call  into  your  remem- 
brance the  moneth  of  May,  as  did  Queen  Guinevere,  for  whom 
I  make  here  a  little  mention,  that  while  she  loved  she  was  a 
true  lover,  and  therefore  she  had  a  good  end." 

She  is  here  the  persistent  type  of  the  fatal  woman 
who  brings  about  a  hero's  death,  the  legendary  cause  of 
wars,  assassinations,  and  the  loss  of  kingdoms,  as  she 
is  still  the  cause  of  bloodsheds  and  revengeful  murders 
among  warlike  tribes ;  her  misconduct  is  now  in  civilised 
society  no  more  than  a  private  misfortune,  it  was  for- 
merly a  public  calamity.  And  yet  the  old  Celtic 
romance  treats  Guinevere  with  indulgence  and  pity, 
for  it  is  a  tale  of  unhappy  love.  In  Tennyson's  Idyll 
the  tone  and  management  of  the  situation  have  been 
carefully  adjusted  to  the  ethical  sentiment  of  the  pre- 
sent time.  The  King,  when  he  visits  the  Queen  in 
the  nunnery  to  which  she  has  fled,  promises  that  she 
shall  be  protected ;  he  leaves  men 

"  To  guard  thee  in  the  wild  hour  coming  on, 
Lest  hut  a  hair  of  this  low  head  be  harm'd." 

But  he  will  never  see  her  again — 

"  I  hold  that  man  the  worst  of  public  foes 
Who  either  for  his  own  or  children's  sake, 
To  save  his  blood  from  scandal,  lets  the  wife 
Whom  he  knows  false,  abide  and  rule  the  house. 

Better  the  King's  waste  hearth  and  aching  heart 
Than  thou  reseated  in  thy  place  of  light, 
The  mockery  of  my  people,  and  their  bane." 

The   unfortunate   Queen,   left  alone,    pours   out  her 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  107 

remorse  at  having  preferred  an  ardent  lover,  the  flower 
of  chivalry,  to  her  blameless  King,  whom  she  had  once 
found  too  immaculate — 

"  A  moral  child  without  the  craft  to  rule, 
Else  had  he  not  lost  me. 

I  thought  I  could  not  breathe  in  that  fine  air, 
That  pure  severity  of  perfect  light. 
I  yearned  for  warmth  and  colour,  which  I  found 
In  Lancelot." 

Thus  in  Tennyson's  poem  we  have  the  faithless  wife 
and  injured  husband  of  our  own  society;  a  woman's 
agonized  repentance  and  a  man's  stern  justice  that  is 
neither  hard  nor  unforgiving ;  we  have  the  costumes, 
the  scenery,  and  the  dramatis  personce  of  the  old  romance 
with  a  change  of  feeling  and  manners.  The  result  is, 
in  the  first  place,  that  the  excellent  Arthur  lacks  tragic 
quality;  he  does  not  interest  us  sufficiently;  while  there 
is  even  something  tame,  from  the  dramatic  point  of 
view,  in  his  high-minded  generosity  toward  Guinevere. 
Secondly,  to  a  mind  prepossessed  with  the  exactitude  of 
modern  taste,  the  scene  between  the  King  and  Queen 
at  Amesbury,  notwithstanding  its  elevation  of  tone 
and  austere  purity  of  feeling,  suggests  something  like 
a  splendid  anachronism,  though  as  a  moral  lesson, 
nobly  delivered,  it  has  indisputable  power  and  beauty. 
The  poet  is  undoubtedly  entitled  to  illustrate  universal 
truths  by  striking  off  a  new  and  powerful  impression 
from  the  unchanging  types  of  human  character ;  yet 
those  who  have  no  great  skill  at  deciphering  the 
Hyponoia,  the  underlying  significance  of  the  Idylls, 
may  be  pardoned  for  confessing  to  a  feeling  of  some- 
thing remote,  shadowy,  and  spectacular  in  the  company 


108  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

of  these  mediaeval  knights  and  dames,  wizards  and 
wantons,  who  pass  over  the  stage  and  perform  their 
parts  before  an  audience  whose  deeper  thoughts  have 
long  ceased  to  run  in  the  vein  of  fantastic  allegory. 
The  unreality  of  the  whole  environment  inevitably 
diminishes  the  dramatic  effect. 

The  story  of  Tristram  and  La  Belle  Iseult,1  which  is 
perhaps  the  most  beautifully  pathetic  in  the  whole 
cycle  of  Romance,  stirring  all  hearts  with  sympathy 
for  irresistible  ill-fated  passion,  is  left  half  told  in 
Malory's  Morte  d' Arthur,  though  Lancelot  alludes  to 
Tristram's  treacherous  murder  by  King  Mark.  Nor 
has  Tennyson,  in  his  Idyll  of  the  Last  Tournament, 
availed  himself  of  the  supremely  poetical  ending  of 
the  old  legend,  when  Tristram,  mortally  wounded, 
sends  a  messenger  across  the  sea  to  bring  Iseult 
of  Cornwall,  his  first  love,  to  Brittany.  The  re- 
turning vessel,  when  it  comes  within  sight  from  the 
Breton  shore,  is  to  hoist  a  white  sail  if  it  is  bringing 
Iseult,  a  black  sail  if  she  has  refused  to  come.  But 
Iseult  of  Brittany,  his  wife,  tells  him  falsely  that  the 
vessel  has  been  sighted  with  a  black  sail,  whereupon 
Tristram,  who  had  kept  himself  alive  ["  retenait  sa  vie  "] 
until  then,  lets  himself  expire ;  and  Iseult  of  Cornwall 
lands  only  to  die  of  grief  over  his  body.  Here  the  domin- 
ant feeling  is  of  pity  and  pardon  for  broken-hearted 
lovers,  but  in  the  Idyll  of  the  Last  Tournament  Trist- 
ram's story  has  the  conclusion  of  another  and  probably 
a  later  version,  which  is  sudden  and  violent.  King 
Mark,  Arthur's  anti-type,  is  the  suspicious  and  vin- 
dictive husband,  who  surprises  Tristram  with  his  wife, 
and  kills  him  in  the  arms  of  Iseult ;  there  is  here  no 
1  Or  "  Isoude." 


nr.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  109 

allegory  or  romantic  circumstance,  but  the  sombre 
morality  of  a  doom  like  that  of  Francesca  da  Eimini, 
of  lovers  whose  fate  melted  even  the  austerity  of 
Dante.  One  might  wish  that  Tennyson  had  preferred 
the  softer  and  more  compassionate  ending ;  the  more 
so  because  the  story  of  Tristram,  lying  with  failing 
breath  in  his  castle  that  overlooked  the  sea,  and 
receiving  his  death  stroke  from  the  word  brought  him 
of  the  black  sail,  would  have  given  ample  scope  for 
finely  wrought  descriptive  poetry,  and  for  touching  the 
highest  chords  of  emotion.  Yet  the  Idyll  tells  its 
own  story  forcibly,  without  effort  or  exaggeration 
of  language  ;  the  shadow  of  danger  grows  darker  over 
the  amorous  discourse  of  Tristram  and  Iseult  in  her 
bower,  where  the  reckless  passion  of  the  woman  and 
the  kindling  desire  of  the  man  blind  them  to  the 
impending  calamity,  until  their  lips  meet — 

"  But,  while  lie  bow'd  to  kiss  the  jewell'd  throat, 
Out  of  the  dark,  just  as  the  lips  had  touch'd, 
Behind  him  rose  a  shadow  and  a  shriek — 
'  Mark's  way,'  said  Mark,  and  clove  him  through  the  brain." 

The  poem  has  several  examples  of  Tennyson's  singular 
skill  in  briefly  sketching  broad  landscapes — 

"  But  Arthur  with  a  hundred  spears 
Eode  far,  till  o'er  the  illimitable  reed, 
And  many  a  glancing  plash  and  sallowy  isle, 
The  wide-wing'd  sunset  of  the  misty  marsh 
Glared  on  a  huge  machicolated  tower." 
Again — 

"  As  the  crest  of  some  slow-arching  wave, 
Heard  in  dead  night  along  that  table-shore, 
Drops  flat,  and  after  the  great  waters  break 
Whitening  for  half  a  league,  and  thin  themselves, 
Far  over  sands  marbled  with  moon  and  cloud." 


110  TENNYSON  [CH^P. 

Or  a  single  line  may  be  the  setting  of  a  picture,  as  in 
"  The  long  low  dune  and  lazy  plunging  sea." 

And  in  the  Passing  of  Arthur,  when  the  King  is 
following  Modred  to  the  down  by  the  seaside,  where 
he  is  to  fight  the  last  "  dim  weird  battle  of  the  west," 
the  poet  again  shows  his  power  of  fixing  by  a  few 
strokes  the  impression  of  a  desolate  wilderness  bounded 
by  the  sky-lines  of  mountain  and  sea. 

"  Then  rose  the  King  and  moved  his  host  by  night, 
And  ever  push'd  Sir  Modred,  league  by  league, 
Back  to  the  sunset  bound  of  Lyonnesse — 
A  land  of  old  upheaven  from  the  abyss 
By  fire,  to  sink  into  the  abyss  again  ; 
Where  fragments  of  forgotten  peoples  dwelt, 
And  the  long  mountains  ended  in  a  coast 
Of  ever-shifting  sand,  and  far  away 
The  phantom  circle  of  a  moaning  sea." 

In  this  Idyll,  the  last  of  the  series,  we  have  Tennyson's 
Morte  d' Arthur  fragment  of  1842,  reproduced  with 
additions  at  the  beginning  and  the  end  to  carry  on  and 
wind  up  the  epical  narrative,  and  to  point  the  moral 
intention.  The  fantastic  folklore  no  longer  disconcerts 
us,  the  final  Act  of  the  drama  is  purely  heroic.  "We 
have  a  clear  view  of  a  noble  ruler  of  his  people,  born 
out  of  his  due  time,  who  after  striving  to  realise  a  lofty 
ideal  of  justice  and  humanity  in  a  wild  age,  finds  the 
whole  fabric  of  his  State  ruined  by  domestic  perfidy 
and  armed  rebellion,  and  marches  full  of  doubt  and 
despondency  to  the  battle  in  which  he  is  to  fall  and  to 
disappear  mysteriously. 

"  For  I,  being  simple,  thought  to  work  His  will, 
And  have  but  stricken  with  the  sword  in  vain  ; 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  111 

And  all  whereon  I  lean'd  in  wife  and  friend 
Is  traitor  to  my  peace,  and  all  my  realm 
Keels  back  into  the  beast,  and  is  no  more. 
My  God,  Thou  hast  forgotten  me  in  my  death  : 
Nay — God  my  Christ — I  pass  but  shall  not  die." 

The  two  armies  meet,  shrouded  in  a  white  mist  by  the 
seashore,  in  a  stubborn  fight,  until 

"  When  the  dolorous  day 
Grew  drearier  toward  twilight  falling,  came 
A  bitter  wind,  clear  from  the  North,  and  blew 
The  mist  aside,  and  with  that  wind  the  tide 
Hose,  and  the  pale  King  glanced  across  the  field 
Of  battle  :  but  no  man  was  moving  there." 

He  sees  Modred,  kills  him  with  one  last  stroke,  and 
falls  all  but  slain.  Then  follows  the  well-known 
episode  of  the  casting  of  his  sword  Excalibur  into 
the  mere,  and  the  appearance  of  the  dusky  barge  with 
the  black-hooded  Queens. 

In  no  other  part  of  the  entire  poem  is  the  magic  of 
the  old  romance  so  finely  interfused  with  allegory  as 
at  the  close  of  this  Idyll,  where  patriotic  courage  and 
virtue  are  seen  contending  vainly  against  the  powers 
of  evil,  against  that  adverse  Fate,  otherwise  inexor- 
able Circumstance,  which  is  too  strong  for  human 
endeavour,  and  shapes  man's  visible  destiny.  Just  as 
neither  valour,  nor  unflinching  devotion  to  his  city, 
nor  nobility  of  character,  could  save  Hector  from 
death,  or  Andromache  from  bitter  servitude,  so 
against  Arthur  the  hard  facts  of  life  must  prevail, 
and  he  perishes  with  all  his  knights  save  one.  His 
enchanted  sword,  the  emblem  of  personal  prowess, 
is  thrown  back  to  the  water  fairy  as  a  sign  that  his 
warfare  is  ended ;  and  the  three  Queens  with  whom 


112  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

he  sails  away  to  the  island-valley  of  Avilion  may  be, 
to  those  who  seek  for  an  inner  meaning,  symbolical 
of  the  angels  who  bear  away  to  heaven  the  soul 
of  a  brave  warrior.  One  may  well  believe  that 
the  Morte  d' Arthur  legend  is,  like  the  Chanson  de 
Roland,  the  far-descended  survival  of  a  genuine 
tradition  of  some  ancient  battle,  in  which  a  renowned 
chief  was  defeated  and  slain  with  the  flower  of  his 
fighting  men.  Roland,  like  Arthur,  survives  to  the 
last ;  his  dying  effort  is  to  break  his  sword  Durandal, 
as  Arthur's  is  to  have  Excalibur  flung  into  the 
lake.  But  Durandal  will  not  break,  for  there  are 
holy  relics  in  the  hollow  of  the  hilt;  Roland  con- 
fesses his  sins,  commends  himself  to  God,  and  St. 
Michael  and  St.  Gabriel  take  charge  of  his  soul.  We 
are  here  in  the  full  atmosphere  of  Christian  piety 
and  the  mediaeval  Church,  uncoloured  by  that  free 
myth-making  imagination,  the  primitive  semi-pagan 
element,  which  Tennyson  has  retained  to  give  its 
charm  and  glamour  to  his  verse.  His  poem  closes, 
epically,  with  the  vanishing  of  Arthur;  though  the 
prose  chronicle  goes  on  to  relate  how  Lancelot  bade 
farewell  to  Guinevere  in  her  cloister,  followed  her 
funeral  to  Glastonbury,  died  there  of  grief  at  her 
tomb,  and  was  buried  in  his  castle  of  Joyous  Garde, 
where  Sir  Ector  finds  men  singing  the  dirge  over  him 
"full  lamentably."  There  was  good  matter  here  for 
another  Idyll,  but  the  sequel  might  have  disturbed 
the  unity  of  Tennyson's  plan;  and  moreover  the 
doleful  complaint  of  Sir  Ector  over  Lancelot's  body, 
with  its  piercing  simplicity  of  words  and  feeling, 
rises  so  nearly  to  the  highest  level  of  heroic  poetry 
— of  such  passages  as  Helen's  lament  over  Hector's 


iv.]  ENOCH  ARDEN  113 

corpse  in  the  Iliad — that  even  Tennyson's  art  could 
hardly  have  paraphrased  it  successfully. 

If,  after  reading  through  the  Idylls,  we  take  up 
Enoch  Arden,  which  followed  them  in  1864,  the  con- 
trast of  style  and  subject  is  again  remarkable.  This 
poem  begins  by  the  sketch  of  a  little  seaport  on  the 
East  Anglian  coast,  with  the  nets,  old  boats,  and  ship 
timber  strewed  about  the  shore,  and  it  winds  on 
through  the  tale  of  a  fisherman's  homely  joys  and 
griefs,  reminding  us  of  Crabbe,  without  the  quality 
of  hard  pathos  which  Tennyson  found  in  him ;  for  the 
tone  is  softer  and  there  are  more  gleams  of  colour. 
Moreover,  although  the  poet  has  done  his  best  to 
lower  the  pitch  of  his  instrument  into  harmony  with 
a  quiet  unadorned  narrative,  yet  he  cannot  refrain 
here  and  there  from  some  effort  in  describing  common 
things  poetically.  With  Crabbe,  a  full  fish-basket 
would  not  have  been  "  ocean  spoil  in  ocean-smelling 
osier";  nor  would  Enoch's  face  have  been  "rough- 
reddened  with  a  thousand  winter  gales,"  when  a 
hundred  might  have  been  overmuch  for  a  sailor  not 
thirty  years  old  by  the  story.  Nevertheless  the 
opening  lines  have  the  concise  plain-speaking  of  the 
Suffolk  poet,  with  the  same  method  of  grouping  details 
in  the  foreground  of  a  picture ;  and  with  the  difference 
that  Tennyson  widens  his  prospect,  giving  it  distance 
and  air  by  a  sky-line — 

"  Long  lines  of  cliff  breaking  have  left  a  chasm  ; 
And  in  the  chasm  are  foam  and  yellow  sands  ; 
Beyond,  red  roofs  about  a  narrow  wharf 
In  clustsr  ;  then  a  moulder'd  church  ;  and  higher 
A  long  street  climbs  to  one  tall-tower'd  mill ; 
H 


114  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

And  high  in  heaven  behind  it  a  gray  down 
With  Danish  barrows.  .  .  . 

Here  on  this  beach  a  hundred  years  ago, 
Three  children  of  three  houses,  Annie  Lee, 
The  prettiest  little  damsel  in  the  port, 
And  Philip  Ray  the  miller's  only  son, 
And  Enoch  Arden,  a  rough  sailor's  lad 
Made  orphan  by  a  winter  shipwreck,  play'd 
Among  the  waste  and  lumber  of  the  shore, 
Hard  coils  of  cordage,  swarthy  fishing-nets, 
Anchors  of  rusty  fluke,  and  boats  updrawn." 

Enoch  Arden  marries,  but  is  forced  by  stress  of 
poverty  to  leave  his  wife  and  home  on  a  distant 
voyage.  It  is  when  the  sailor,  escaping  from  ship- 
wreck, lands  alone  on  a  tropical  island,  that  the  scene 
begins  to  glow,  and  the  verses  to  fill  with  sound — 

"  He  could  not  see  the  kindly  human  face, 
Nor  ever  hear  a  kindly  voice,  but  heard 
The  myriad  shriek  of  wheeling  ocean-fowl, 
The  league-long  roller  thundering  on  the  reef, 
The  moving  whisper  of  huge  trees  that  branch'd 
And  blossom'd  in  the  zenith." 

And  while  he  wanders  under  the  glare  of  unclouded 
noonday  amid  palms  and  ferns,  in  the  glittering  heat 
of  land  and  water,  his  mind's  eye  sees  his  English 
home  far  away — 

"  The  chill 

November  dawns  and  dewy-glooming  downs, 
The  gentle  shower,  the  smell  of  dying  leaves, 
And  the  low  moan  of  leaden-colour5  d  seas." 

The  tale  is  founded  on  an  incident  that  must  have 
been  common  enough  in  the  foretime,  particularly 
among  seafaring  people,  when  men  wandered  abroad 
and  were  lost,  or  found  their  way  home  after  many 


iv.]  ENOCH  ARDEN  115 

years,  to  be  welcomed  or  disowned  by  their  families 
as  the  case  might  be.  It  is  the  Odyssey  of  humble 
mariners,  and  many  traces  of  it  may  be  found  in 
the  folklore  and  in  the  superstitions  of  Asia  as  well 
as  of  Europe,  where  the  forgotten  husband  is  liable 
to  be  treated  on  his  reappearance  as  a  ghostly  revenant, 
or  even  as  a  demon  who  has  assumed  a  dead  man's 
body  in  order  to  gain  entrance  into  the  house.  In 
most  of  these  stories,  as  in  a  rude  English  sea  ballad 
that  used  to  be  well  known,  and  in  an  old  French 
song  of  the  Breton  coast,  the  Penelope  of  a  small  house- 
hold has  yielded  to  her  suitors  and  married  again  as 
in  Enoch  Arden,  and  as  in  Crabbe's  Tale  of  the  Parting 
Hour,  where  the  castaway  mariner  comes  back  to  find 
his  sweetheart  an  elderly  widow.  But  in  the  ancient 
epic  and  also  in  these  folk  tales  the  next  step  is  for 
the  husband  to  declare  his  identity  and  to  demand  his 
rights  most  vigorously,  as  Ulysses  did,  but  as  Enoch 
Arden  does  not.  The  popular  ending,  founded  pro- 
bably on  real  life,  is  that  the  man  who  has  been 
supplanted  in  his  absence  finally  accepts  the  situation 
and  retires  disconsolately,  or,  as  in  the  novel  of  Gil 
Bias,  philosophically.  Tennyson  has  preferred,  rightly 
for  the  purpose  of  his  art,  a  conclusion  of  pathetic 
self-sacrifice;  and  Enoch,  after  one  sight  of  his  wife 
and  children  in  a  cheerful  home,  which  is  tenderly 
described,  accepts  oblivion,  and  resolves  that  they 
shall  never  discover  him  alive — 

"  But  if  my  children  care  to  see  me  dead, 
Who  hardly  knew  me  living,  let  them  come, 
I  am  their  father ;  but  she  must  not  come, 
For  my  dead  face  would  vex  her  after-life." 

The  poem  has  been  dramatised  in  London  and  New 


116  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

York,  was  translated  into  Latin,  and  into  seven 
different  European  languages ;  while  in  France  alone 
seven  translations,  most  of  them  annotated,  have 
been  made ;  and  Professor  A.  Beljame  of  the  Paris 
University  has  written  a  most  able  study  of  the 
versification  in  Enoch  Arden.  It  is  indeed  an  ex- 
cellent piece  of  work,  which  for  sincerity  of  feeling, 
distinctness  of  outline,  and  restraint  in  language,  may 
be  matched  with  the  poem  of  Dora;  while  by  com- 
paring it  with  Aylmer's  Field,  that  appeared  in  the 
same  volume,  we  can  take  a  measure  both  of  Tennyson's 
strength  and  of  his  imperfections  in  the  delineation  of 
contemporary  life,  outside  the  field  of  romance. 

The  story  in  Aylmer's  Field  runs  upon  the  same 
theme  as  in  Maud  and  Locksley  Hall,  with  a  variation 
of  plot  and  circumstance.  It  reproduces  the  some- 
what commonplace  situation  of  two  playmates,  boy 
and  girl,  who  fall  in  love  with  each  other  on  reaching 
the  age  of  indiscretion,  whereupon  the  rich  and  haughty 
squire  indignantly  ejects  the  young  man,  breaking  off 
the  engagement,  and  breaking  his  daughter's  heart  in 
consequence.  The  lover  kills  himself,  and  his  brother, 
the  parish  clergyman,  takes  the  whole  miserable  affair 
as  his  text  for  a  sermon  that  denounces  the  idols  of 
wealth  and  pedigree,  and  shows  God's  punishment  upon 
worldly  pride.  It  might  be  wished  that  Tennyson, 
whose  special  talent  did  not  lie  in  wielding  the  scourge, 
should  have  perceived  that  extreme  condemnation  of 
this  particular  kind  of  social  injustice  is  liable  to  take 
a  false  air  of  sentiment  which  embarrasses  the  im- 
pressive treatment  of  the  situation  in  poetry. 

"  Sir  Aylmer  Aylmer,  that  almighty  man, 
The  county  God," 


iv.]  AYLMER'S  FIELD  117 

is  too  conventional  a  figure,  obviously  magnified,  and 
has  served  too  long  under  novel-writers,  to  be  pro- 
moted into  the  upper  rank  of  poetical  characters  ;  and 
it  is  ineffectual  to  write  him  down  "  insolent,  brainless, 
heartless  ...  an  old  pheasant  lord  and  partridge 
breeder,"  for  the  lash  falls  in  vain  on  the  back  of  a 
callous  society,  to  whom  worldly  considerations  for  Sir 
Aylmer's  motives,  if  not  for  his  manners,  appeal  with 
some  extenuating  force;  and  who  might  rejoin  that 
the  Lord  of  Burleigh's  marriage  with  a  lowly  maiden 
turned  out  unhappily.  Nor  is  the  morality  of  the 
story  indisputable.  Is  Sir  Aylmer's  iniquity  so  deep 
as  to  justify  a  poet  in  bringing  down  the  wrath  of  God 
upon  his  head,  desolation  upon  his  house,  the  dilapida- 
tion of  his  ancient  hall,  and  the  extinction  of  his 
family  ? 

"  The  man  became 

Imbecile  ;  his  one  word  was  '  desolate ' ; 

Dead  for  two  years  before  his  death  was  he  : 

Then  the  great  Hall  was  wholly  broken  down, 
And  the  broad  woodland  parcell'd  into  farms  ; 
And  where  the  two  contrived  their  daughter's  good, 
Lies  the  hawk's  cast,  the  mole  has  made  his  run, 

The  slow-worm  creeps,  and  the  thin  weasel  there 
Follows  the  mouse,  and  all  is  open  field." 

Purse-pride  and  the  infatuation  of  social  prejudice  are 
not  sins  dark  enough  for  such  a  tremendous  Nemesis ; 
they  fall  rather  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  con- 
temptuous satirist,  who  can  sometimes  hit  the  mark  in 
one  cutting  sentence,  as  when  Swift  says  that  you  can 
tell  what  God  thinks  of  wealth  by  noticing  the  kind  of 
people  on  whom  He  thinks  fit  to  bestow  it. 


CHAPTER  V 
PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY 

LET  us  turn  to  another  aspect  of  English  life ;  for,  if 
his  studies  from  the  antique  be  excepted,  no  great 
English  poet  has  travelled  for  his  subjects  more  rarely 
beyond  his  native  land  than  Tennyson.  In  such  poems 
of  rural  scenery  and  character  as  The  May  Queen 
and  The  Grandmother,  we  have  the  annals  of  the 
village,  in  youth  and  age,  told  with  a  sweet  and  serious 
feeling,  in  flowing  monosyllabic  lines  that  affect  and 
captivate  a  reader  by  their  freedom  from  varnishing  or 
emphasis.  Their  composition  has  not  the  unconscious 
simplicity  of  Auld  Eobin  Gray,  where  the  resemblance 
to  a  genuine  ballad  comes  from  that  absence  of  colour- 
ing adjectives  [there  is  but  one  in  all  the  eight  stanzas] 
which  is  the  note  of  all  primitive  and  popular  verse 
— a  woodnote  wild  that  is  very  seldom  caught  and 
domesticated  by  elaborate  culture.  Tennyson's  genius 
was  essentially  cultivated  and  picturesque ;  he  laid 
on  his  tints  with  the  artistic  design  of  illuminating 
the  beauty  of  quiet  nature,  or  he  filled  in  with  descrip- 
tive particulars  in  order  to  produce  the  scene's  general 
impression,  as  in  the  following  stanza  : — 

"  When  the  flowers  come  again,  mother,  beneath  the  waning 
light 

You'll  never  see  me  more  in  the  long  gray  fields  at  night ; 
118 


CHAP,  v.]  PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY  119 

When  from  the  dry  dark  wold  the  summer  airs  blow  cool 
On  the  oat-grass  and  the  sword-grass,  and  the  bulrush  in 
the  pool," 

which  is  in  a  style  quite  different  from  that  of  un- 
lettered verse-makers. 

Yet  the  plaintive  lament  of  the  May  Queen  for  her 
doom  of  early  death,  and  the  sadness  of  old  age  recall- 
ing the  memories  of  youth,  are  presented  with  a  truth 
and  earnestness  that  touch  universal  human  affections 
and  the  sense  of  mortality ;  and  the  language  is  purely 
poetical,  with  the  same  exclusion  of  dialect  or  imita- 
tion of  rustic  talk  that  is  seen  in  all  Wordsworth's 
pastorals.  These  poems  of  Tennyson  aim  at,  and  do 
not  fall  far  short  of,  the  "  simplicity  of  diction  "  which 
Wordsworth  affirmed  that  he  had  introduced  into 
English  verse  as  the  proper  medium  for  rendering  the 
elementary  feelings  of  the  country-folk  and  showing  the 
poetical  aspect  of  common  things.  Wordsworth's  prin- 
ciple, as  explained  in  his  Preface  to  the  Lyrical  Ballads, 
was  to  choose  incidents  and  situations  of  rural  life,  and 
to  describe  them  as  far  as  possible  in  the  language  really 
used  by  the  people,  purified,  indeed,  from  grossness 
and  uncouth  provincialisms.  Good  prose,  he  main- 
tained, was  the  proper  vehicle  for  this  kind  of  poetry : 
his  object  was  to  clothe  the  thoughts  and  characters  in 
plain  close-fitting  words,  adapting  the  speech  to  the 
situation.  It  was  not  difficult  for  Coleridge  to  prove, 
in  the  well-known  criticism  that  is  to  be  found  in  his 
Biographia  Literaria,  that  language  so  purified  was  very 
different  from  the  true  vulgar  tongue ;  that  Wordsworth, 
in  fact,  used  good  plain  English  vivified  and  elevated 
poetically,  and  was  at  his  worst  in  the  lines  which 
come  nearest  to  commonplace  rustic  conversation. 


120  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Moreover,  Wordsworth,  though  he  did  good  service 
in  discarding  finally  the  old  conventional  pastoral, 
diverged  habitually  into  philosophic  reflections  that 
were  manifestly  and  intentionally  out  of  keeping  with 
his  rustic  characters.  In  the  two  poems  of  The  May 
Queen  and  The  Grandmother  Tennyson  makes  no 
pretence  of  imitating  the  language  of  his  villagers; 
his  object  is  to  translate  their  genuine  feelings  poetic- 
ally ;  he  simplifies  his  diction  and  strips  it  of  super- 
fluous ornament;  but  no  man  knew  better  that  real 
idiomatic  vernacular  is  a  very  different  thing.  What 
this  is,  and  the  use  that  can  be  made  of  it,  he  has 
shown  separately.  He  does  not  relate  a  story  and 
moralise  upon  it,  as  Wordsworth  usually  did ;  he  ex- 
hibits dramatic  impersonations  that  portray  the  homely 
joys  and  griefs  of  the  peasantry,  that  show  how  they 
act  and  what  they  say,  in  language  that  is  neverthe- 
less refined,  correct,  and  vivid,  and  in  a  style  which  is 
the  poet's  own. 

It  will  perhaps  be  admitted  that  this  method  of  leaving 
his  personages  to  speak  for  themselves  was  a  novelty 
in  the  lyrics  of  rusticity.  In  subsequent  poems  Tenny- 
son went  one  step  further  in  compliance  with  the 
modern  demand  for  what  is  called  realism,  by  trying 
the  bold  experiment,  upon  which  neither  Wordsworth 
nor  even  Crabbe  ever  ventured,  of  making  them  speak  in 
their  own  rough  unpolished  vernacular,  as  if  they  were 
acting  their  parts  on  a  stage.  This  was  the  final  death- 
blow to  the  tradition  of  the  elegant  pastoral.  We 
have  to  remember  that  Burns  was  the  first  poet  of 
genius  who  proved  that  the  strenuous  racy  speech  of 
the  people  contained  elements  of  high  poetic  value, 
being  of  course  led  to  the  discovery  by  the  fact  that  it 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       121 

lay  ready  to  his  hand,  for  he  himself  was  a  poet  born 
and  bred  up  among  the  Scottish  peasantry.  In  Scot- 
land, as  in  the  New  England  of  America,  there  existed 
a  true  and  widespread  provincial  dialect,  which  gave  a 
national  flavour  and  local  associations  to  verses  in 
which  it  was  used ;  but  in  England,  the  home  of 
ancient  literary  culture,  the  writing  of  verse  in  dialect 
or  patois  had  never  hitherto  been  attempted  by  any  of 
the  recognised  poets  (and  they  are  numerous)  who 
have  condescended  to  the  short  and  simple  annals  of 
the  village.1  That  Tennyson,  the  mystical  romancer, 
the  dreamer  of  fair  women,  should  also  have  written 
spirited  verses  full  of  rude  and  quaint  humour,  some- 
times even  too  redolent  of  the  soil,  is  a  notable 
example  of  his  versatility.  And  his  Northern 
Farmer  set  the  fashion,  in  England,  of  drawing 
character-sketches  in  rough-hewn  verse  that  imitates 
not  only  the  speech  but  the  accent  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  unsophisticated  men.  It  is  a  form  of 
metrical  composition  that  has  lately  spread,  as  a  species 
of  modern  ballad,  throughout  the  British  Empire  and 
the  United  States  of  America,  but  has  little  or  no 
existence  in  any  language  except  the  English.2 

FitzGerald,  after  reading  the  "  Holy  Grail,"  writes 
(1870)  to  Tennyson— 

"  The  whole  myth  of  Arthur's  Bound  Table  Dynasty  in 
Britain  presents  itself  before  me  with  a  sort  of  cloudy,  Stone- 
henge  grandeur.  I  am  not  sure  if  the  old  Knight's  adventures 

J  William  Barnes,  who  first  published  his  poems  in  the 
Dorsetshire  dialect  in  1833,  can  hardly  be  ranked  among  the 
higher  poets. 

2  Such  poems  as  those  of  Mistral  in  the  Provencal  dialect 
belong,  I  think,  to  a  different  order. 


122  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

do  not  tell  upon  me  better,  touched  in  some  lyrical  way  (like 
your  own  '  Lady  of  Shalott '),  than  when  elaborated  into  epic 
form.  .  .  .  Anyhow,  Alfred,  while  I  feel  how  pure,  noble,  and 
holy  your  work  is,  and  whole  phrases,  lines,  and  sentences  of 
it  will  abide  with  me,  and,  I  am  sure,  with  men  after  me,  I 
read  on  till  the  { Lincolnshire  Farmer '  drew  tears  to  my  eyes. 
I  was  got  back  to  the  substantial  rough-spun  Nature  I  knew  ; 
and  the  old  brute,  invested  by  you  with  the  solemn  humour  of 
Humanity,  like  Shakespeare's  Shallow,  became  a  more  pathetic 
phenomenon  than  the  knights  who  revisit  the  world  in  your 
other  verse." 

In  the  two  poems  of  the  Northern  Farmer,  indeed, 
we  have  verisimilitude  of  portraiture  and  authentic 
delineation  of  character,  preserving  the  type  and 
developing  its  peculiar  features  by  the  insight 
that  belongs  to  the  observing  faculty,  with  artistic 
fidelity  in  details.  Yet  the  treatment  of  these  subjects 
needs  much  discrimination  and  reserve ;  for  unless  there 
is  a  solid  foundation  of  point  and  humour,  the  dialect 
becomes  mere  jargon  ;  and  the  particulars  must  never 
be  too  inelegant,  nor  must  the  verse  be  overcrowded 
with  phonetic  pronunciations.  The  Northern  Cobbler, 
which  betrays  defects  of  this  kind,  must  be  ranked, 
critically,  below  the  Farmer;  and  the  Village  Wife 
has  a  certain  triviality  of  voluble  talk  which  may  be 
true  enough  to  nature,  but  hardly  supports  her  claim 
to  a  niche  in  a  poetic  gallery  of  national  portraits. 

"  'Ouse-keeper  sent  tha,  my  lass,  fur  New  Squire  coom'd 

last  night. 
Butter  an'  heggs — yis — yis.     I'll  goa  wij  tha  back ;   all 

right ; 
Butter  I  warrants  be  prime,  an'  I  warrants  the  heggs  be 

as  well, 
Hafe  a  pint  o'  milk  runs  out  when  ya  breaks  the  shell." 


v.]        PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       123 

Take  away  the  queer  spelling,  and  turn  the  lines  into 
ordinary  English,  and  you  have  commonplace  domestic 
prose  hardly  worth  putting  into  rhyme.  By  the  same 
test  The  Spinster's  Sweet- 'Arts  must  be  reckoned 
among  the  less  successful  excursions  into  the  field  of 
low  life,  for  even  there  it  is  dangerous  to  descend 
among  ignoble  particulars,  and  the  Art  of  Sinking 
consists  in  avoiding  degradation — 

"  To  be  horder'd  about,  an'  waaked,  when  Molly  'd  put  out 

the  light, 
By  a  man  coomin'  in  wi'  a  hiccup  at  ony  hour  o'  the 

night ! 
An'  the  taable  staain'd  wi'  'is  aale,  an'  the  mud  o'  'is  boots 

o'  the  stairs, 
An'  the  stink  o'  'is  pipe  i'  the  'ouse,  an'  the  mark  o'  'is  'ead 

o'  the  chairs  ! " 

"Koden  Noel,"  writes  Tennyson,  "calls  the  two 
Northern  Farmers  photography;  but  I  call  them 
imaginative  " — as  of  course  they  are,  being  far  above 
mere  exact  presentations  of  individuals.  And  in  pro- 
portion as  photography,  the  bare  indifferent  printing 
off  of  things  as  they  are,  predominates  in  this  kind  of 
work,  it  becomes  no  fit  business  for  a  master  of  poetical 
grace  and  distinction.  Here,  again,  we  may  refer  to 
Coleridge's  criticism  on  Wordsworth's  Preface,  where 
he  (Wordsworth)  explains  that  he  has  chosen  low  and 
rustic  subjects,  because  in  that  condition  the  essential 
passions  of  the  heart  are  less  under  restraint,  and 
speak  a  plainer  and  more  emphatic  language.  To  this 
Coleridge  replies  that  low  and  rustic  life  is  in  itself 
unpoetic,  and  that  poetry  must  idealise.  Where 
Wordsworth  does  idealise,  he  says,  his  figures  have 
the  representative  quality;  where  the  poet  goes  too 


124  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

close  to  the  real  native  product,  as  in  the  "Idiot  Boy," 
he  becomes  commonplace ;  and  when  he  describes  a  dull 
and  garrulous  man  exactly,  he  becomes  himself  dull. 
So,  also,  when  Tennyson  gives  us  the  vulgar  tongue  in 
its  full  flavour,  the  poetical  element  is  overpowered 
and  disappears. 

But  if  it  must  be  admitted  that  passages  like  these 
are  blemishes  on  the  picture,  "  in  truth  to  nature 
missing  truth  to  art,"  we  may  regard  them  as  an 
overbalance  of  Tennyson's  proclivities,  as  lapses  on 
the  side  to  which  his  genius  leans.  Throughout  his 
poetry,  from  the  highest  to  the  humblest  subject, 
runs  a  vivid  objectivity  ;  he  sees  things  in  strong 
relief,  and  they  are  impressed  with  a  sharp  edge 
upon  a  very  receptive  mind.  Even  at  the  times 
when  he  is  dropping  his  plummet  into  the  abyss  of 
the  mysteries  that  encompass  human  existence  and 
destiny,  he  rarely  carries  abstract  thought  to  any 
depth;  he  returns  to  the  surface  and  refreshes  him- 
self among  the  forms  of  the  visible  world.  Here 
he  is  in  his  proper  domain,  in  his  power  of  exact 
delineation,  of  recording  briefly  the  sensation  received 
and  retained,  by  looking  (for  example)  attentively  at  a 
wide  prospect,  and  taking  out  of  it  the  suggestion  or 
the  similitudes,  reading  from  it  the  language  or  dis- 
course of  Nature.  And  as  in  his  best  work  he  takes 
accurate  notice  of  minor  things,  of  wild  flowers  and 
foliage,  of  a  weasel's  faint  cry  or  a  bird's  call,  or  even 
of  a  cow's  wrinkled  throat  in  the  play  of  sunlight,  so 
when  he  is  giving  us  the  rough  side  of  life  he  has 
occasionally  fallen  into  excess  of  naturalism  by  his 
propensity  for  minute  observation  of  things  that  will 
not  bear  inspecting  too  closely. 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       125 

Yet  his  pre-eminent  gift  was  for  the  imaginative 
apprehension  of  beauty,  and  his  practice  is  exemplified 
in  the  record  of  his  journeys.  In  1860,  for  example, 
he  made  an  excursion  to  Cornwall  and  the  Scilly 
Islands,  gathering  a  harvest  of  impressions  from  the 
views  of  the  coast,  the  cliffs,  the  long  curving  sweep 
of  the  sandy  shore,  the  towering  Atlantic  breakers, 
and  jotting  down  the  "  nature  -  similes,"  which, 
being  afterwards  grafted  into  his  verse,  became  the 
decorative  framework  that  contained  and  gave  a  local 
habitation  to  his  Arthurian  legends.  Then  he  returned 
to  Farringford,  with  its  careless  ordered  garden  close 
to  the  edge  of  a  noble  down,  where  his  friends  visited 
him,  and  listened  to  his  table  talk,  and  heard  him 
read  his  poems.  In  1861  he  was  in  Auvergne,  sur- 
veying, for  the  most  part  silently,  the  mountains, 
lakes,  and  torrents ;  whence  the  party  travelled  south- 
ward to  the  Pyrenees,  meeting  Arthur  Clough  at 
Luchon,  with  continual  additions  throughout  the 
journey  to  the  poetic  sketch-book.  He  could  thus 
fix  in  a  few  words  the  sensations  of  the  moment, 
fresh  and  distinct,  storing  them  for  eventual  use 
either  descriptively,  as  part  of  a  narrative,  or  as 
metaphors  to  expand  and  give  forms  to  a  thought. 
It  may  be  noticed,  by  the  way,  that  the  most  famous  of 
Tennyson's  contemporary  poets  in  France  worked  by 
precisely  the  same  method.  Victor  Hugo's  "  Couchers 
du  Soleil "  are  careful  studies  from  nature  of  the  tones 
and  forms  of  a  landscape  under  the  setting  sun.  Both 
these  great  artists  sought  to  fix  accurately  the  scene, 
and  to  translate  the  momentary  sensation  into  accor- 
dance with  the  thought  that  it  awakened,  to  use  it 
as  the  background  or  environment  of  human  action, 


126  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

or  merely  to  obtain  a  fresh  image  for  the  poetic 
embodiment  of  an  idea,  in  substitution  for  images 
that  have  been  worn  out  or  become  obsolete  by 
long  usage.  Metaphor  lies  at  the  base  of  all 
language;  and  while  the  first  man  who  spoke  of 
running  water  conveyed  his  thought  by  an  image 
which  invested  the  stream  with  a  being  like  his 
own,  the  poets  latterly  resorted  to  metaphor,  or  to 
myth — which  is  in  their  hands  metaphor  personi- 
fied— as  a  mere  repertory  for  figurative  expression. 
When  the  thought  at  once  strikes  out  the  image, 
it  comes  fresher  from  the  mint  than  when  the  image 
has  been  noted  and  treasured  up  beforehand  for 
illustration  of  thought  or  action.  It  may  be  observed 
that  Tennyson  never  uses  what  may  be  called  the 
mythological  device ;  he  never  appeals  directly  to 
the  ocean  or  the  mountain  as  if  it  were  a  living 
embodiment  of  Nature,  as  Byron  does;  he  absorbs 
and  translates  the  impress  of  inanimate  things  upon 
the  perceptive  mind.  A  year  later  we  find  him 
making  similar  studies  for  his  poetry  from  the  crags 
and  dismantled  castles  of  Derbyshire  and  Yorkshire. 
It  would  seem  that  his  wandering  in  the  quiet  familiar 
scenery  of  England  served  him  best  in  this  way; 
since,  if  we  may  judge  from  a  letter  written  immedi- 
ately after  his  return  from  abroad,  his  reminiscences 
of  a  journey  through  France  were  troubled  by  a  kind 
of  resentment  against  the  annoyances  that  never  failed 
to  discompose  him  in  strange  lands,  and  which  in  this 
instance  appear  to  have  affected  his  health. 

"France,  I  believe,  overset  me,  and  more  especially  the 
foul  ways  and  unhappy  diet  of  that  charming  Auvergne  ;  no 
amount  of  granite  craters  or  chestnut- woods,  or  lava-streams, 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       127 

not  the  Puy  de  Dome  which  I  climbed,  nor  the  Glen  of  Koyat 
where  I  lived,  nor  the  still  more  magnificent  view  of  the  dead 
volcanoes  from  the  ascent  to  Mont  Dore  could  make  amends 
for  those  drawbacks  ;  so  we  all  fell  sick  by  turns.  ...  I 
remain  with  a  torpid  liver,  not  having  much  pleasure  in 
anything."  l 

Nevertheless  the  course  and  circumstances  of  Tennyson's 
middle  life  were  singularly  untroubled  and  uneventful, 
leaving  few  turning-points  or  landmarks  for  the  bio- 
grapher. From  straitened  means  in  youth  he  had  now 
passed  to  comparative  affluence  and  the  serenity  of 
a  well-ordered  home ;  from  distinction  within  a  circle 
of  choice  friends  to  celebrity  and  eminence  among  the 
poets  of  his  century.  At  Farringford,  though  his 
hours  of  work  and  meditation  were  properly  set  apart, 
his  life  was  by  no  means  secluded.  He  had  many 
visitors  and  guests  to  whom  he  dispensed  hospitality, 
and  with  them  held  the  free  discourse  and  interchange 
of  ideas  that  reveal  a  man's  character  and  opinions. 
His  natural  disposition  was  toward  reserve  and  toward 
a  certain  taciturnity,  that  probably  came  from  the 
habit  of  reflection  and  of  fastidiousness  in  the  choice 
of  phrase ;  he  spoke  with  intervals  of  silence. 

After  this  manner  the  record  of  Tennyson's  life  runs 
in  a  dignified  tranquillity,  varied  only  by  incidents  that 
attest  his  established  and  spreading  reputation  as  an 
illustrious  man  of  letters,  known  by  all  Englishmen, 
and  whose  acquaintance  was  desired  by  distinguished 
foreign  visitors  to  his  country.  In  1864  he  received 
at  Farringford  Garibaldi,  who  planted  a  tree  in  the 
garden,  and  discoursed  with  him  on  Italian  poetry. 
He  writes  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll:  "What  a  noble 

1  Memoir. 


128  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

human  being !  I  expected  to  see  a  hero,  and  was  not 
disappointed.  When  I  asked  if  he  returned  through 
France,  he  said  he  would  never  set  foot  on  the  soil  of 
France  again.  I  happened  to  make  use  of  the  expres- 
sion, 'That  fatal  debt  of  gratitude  owed  by  Italy  to 
Napoleon.'  'Gratitude,'  he  said;  'hasn't  he  had  his 
pay,  his  reward  1  If  Napoleon  were  dead,  I  should  be 
glad ;  and  if  I  were  dead,  he  would  be  glad.' " *  And 
yet  there  was  prophetic  truth  in  Tennyson's  words, 
though  not  as  he  meant  them;  for  the  debt  proved 
fatal,  not  to  Italy,  but  to  Napoleon,  whose  attachment 
to  the  cause  of  Italian  liberty  drew  him  into  fatal 
complications  that  hampered  all  his  foreign  policy  and 
contributed  to  his  eventual  downfall.  The  Longfellows 
from  America,  Professor  Owen,  Queen  Emma  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  the  son  of  the  Abyssinian  King 
Theodore,  who  lost  life  and  kingdom  in  his  war 
with  the  English,  and  Mr.  Darwin — to  whom  Tennyson 
said,  "Your  theory  of  Evolution  does  not  make  against 
Christianity  ? "  and  Darwin  answered,  "  No,  certainly 
not" — may  be  mentioned  to  exemplify  the  variety 
of  his  visitors.  We  have  a  journal  of  a  tour  to 
Waterloo,  with  a  careful  survey  of  the  battlefield, 
and  thence  to  Weimar,  where  the  party  saw  Goethe's 
house,  with  all  his  old  boots  at  the  entrance,  and 
Goethe's  coffin  at  the  Fiirstengruft.  Tennyson  joined, 
as  might  have  been  expected,  the  Committee  for  the 
defence  of  Governor  Eyre,  whose  figure  as  the 
saviour  of  Jamaica  struck  the  hardy  temper  of  the 
English  people,  bringing  out  their  unfailing  readi- 
ness to  pardon  doing  too  much  a  great  deal  more 
easily  than  doing  too  little  in  a  sharp  emergency, 
1  Memoir. 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        129 

and  to  be  amazingly  indulgent  as   to   the   methods 
employed. 

In  1867  Tennyson  was  in  negotiation  for  the  land 
on  Blackdown  in  Surrey,  where  he  afterwards  built 
Aldworth,  on  a  site  accessible  only  by  a  rough  track 
across  the  sandy  plateau  of  the  down  from  the  lanes 
above  Haslemere;  placing  the  house  on  a  sheltered 
ledge  of  the  uppermost  part  of  the  hill's  slope  south- 
ward, with  a  broad  view  over  the  Sussex  weald  to 
the  South  Downs  and  the  sea,  and  Leith  Hill  standing 
out  on  the  eastern  horizon.  Then  in  1868-69  he 
went  abroad  with  Mr.  Frederick  Locker,  who  has  left 
notes  on  the  philosophic  discourse,  always  so  attractive 
to  Tennyson,  that  throws  many  side-lights  on  his  poetry. 
Some  of  these  reminiscences  show  his  mystical  pro- 
pensity, the  habit  of  ruminating  indecisively  over 
speculations  which  understand  all  visible  things  to  be 
signs  and  shadows  of  things  invisible,  the  intimations 
of  eternal  Power  and  Divinity.1  His  thoughts  also  ran 
upon  the  limited  range  of  our  sense-perceptions,  and 
the  relativity  of  our  ideas  to  our  ignorance,  on  Faith 
transcending  the  bounds  of  Reason,  and  on  his  own  firm 
belief  in  Love,  Virtue,  and  Duty.  His  mind  wavered 
thus  over  the  face  of  the  deep  waters,  returning 
always  to  the  solid  ground  of  human  affections  and 
moral  obligations,  in  accordance  with  the  advice  of 
Socrates,  that  where  certainty  is  unattainable  one 
should  take  the  best  and  most  irrefragable  of  human 
notions,  and  let  this  be  the  raft  upon  which  life's 
voyage  is  to  be  made. 

A  few  lines  may  be  subjoined  from  the  same  notes, 
1  St.  Paul,  Romans  i.  20. 
I 


130  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  show  the  lighter  side  of  Tennyson's  character, 
so  well  known  to  all  who  had  the  privilege  of  his 
acquaintance. 

"  Balzac's  remark  that '  Dans  tout  homme  de  ge"nie  il  y  a  tin 
enfant,'  may  find  its  illustration  in  Tennyson.  He  is  the  only 
grown-up  human  being  that  I  know  of  who  habitually  thinks 
aloud.  His  humour  is  of  the  dryest,  it  is  admirable.  .  .  .  He 
tells  a  story  excellently,  and  has  a  catching  laugh.  There  are 
people  who  laugh  because  they  are  shy  or  disconcerted,  or  for 
lack  of  ideas  .  .  .  only  a  few  because  they  are  happy  or 
amused,  or  perhaps  triumphant.  Tennyson  has  an  entirely 
natural  and  a  very  kindly  laugh." * 

It  was,  indeed,  this  vein  of  simplicity,  unsophisticated 
by  conventionality,  that  often  gave  unexpected  turns 
to  his  humour,  while  it  had  much  to  do  with  preserving 
that  keen  sense,  or  even  enjoyment,  of  ludicrous  incon- 
gruities, of  the  comic  effects  of  indecorum  or  uncon- 
scious vulgarity,  which  he  himself  once  noticed  in 
Shakespeare.  If  his  laugh  was  triumphant,  it  was 
from  that  sudden  glory  which  Hobbes  defines  to  be 
the  cause  of  laughter  at  human  imperfections ;  though 
no  one  was  further  above  ill-natured  scorn  than  Tenny- 
son, or  less  prone  to  harsh  judgment  upon  the  ordinary 
follies  and  eccentricities  of  men. 

It  may  be  permissible,  for  the  purpose  of  collating 
the  impressions  made  by  Tennyson  on  those  who  knew 
him  well  and  saw  him  often  about  this  time,  to  add 
here  an  extract  from  some  recollections  of  his  con- 
versation that  have  been  left  by  Mr.  F.  Palgrave — 

"  Every  one  will  have  seen  men,  distinguished  in  some  line 
of  work,  whose  conversation  (to  take  the  old  figure)  either 
'  smelt  too  strongly  of  the  lamp,'  or  lay  quite  apart  from  their 
art  and  craft.  What,  through  all  these  years,  struck  me  about 
Tennyson,  was  that  whilst  he  never  deviated  into  poetical 
1  Memoir. 


v.]       PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       131 

language  as  such,  whether  in  rhetoric  or  highly -coloured 
phrase,  yet  throughout  the  substance  of  his  talk  the  same 
mode  of  thought,  the  same  imaginative  grasp  of  nature,  the 
same  fineness  and  gentleness  in  his  view  of  character,  the  same 
forbearance  and  toleration,  the  aurea  mediocritas  despised  by 
fools  and  fanatics,  which  are  stamped  on  his  poetry,  were  con- 
stantly perceptible ;  whilst  in  the  easy  and,  as  it  were,  unsought 
choiceness,  the  conscientious  and  truth-loving  precision  of  his 
words,  the  same  personal  identity  revealed  itself." * 

Here  we  have  the  large  serenity  of  a  poet  in  whom 
years  are  strengthening  his  philosophy  of  everyday 
life,  while  he  was  constantly  pondering  upon  the 
mysteries  which  encompass  all  phenomenal  existence. 
In  the  autumn  of  1868,  as  we  learn  from  a  note  pre- 
fixed by  the  editor  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  review  to  an 
article,  Tennyson  and  the  Rev.  Charles  Pritchard  were 
the  guests  of  Mr.  James  Knowles ;  and  as  the  conversa- 
tion had  frequently  turned  on  speculative  subjects,  it 
was  suggested  that  a  society  might  be  formed  "  to  dis- 
cuss such  questions  after  the  manner  and  with  the 
freedom  of  an  ordinary  scientific  society."  This  pro- 
posal was  acted  upon,  with  the  result  that  some  of  the 
leading  representatives  of  theological  opinion,  scientific 
research,  and  philosophic  interest  came  together  in  the 
Metaphysical  Society,  of  which  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  has 
observed  that  four  out  of  five  of  its  members  knew 
nothing  of  metaphysics.  We  learn  from  Mr.  Knowles 
that  the  plan  came  first  to  be  set  on  foot  entirely 
through  Tennyson's  adhesion  to  it;  and  although 
during  the  Society's  existence  of  twelve  years  his 
attendance  was  infrequent — while  he  usually  listened 
silently  to  the  debates — one  may  guess  that  the  papers 
read  or  discussed  on  problems  that  had  always  occupied 
1  Memoir. 


132  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

his  mind  must  have  increased  their  attraction  for  him, 
and  may  have  influenced  the  philosophic  drift  of  his  sub- 
sequent poetry.  His  poem  on  The  Higher  Pantheism, 
which  he  sent  to  be  read  before  the  Society,  maintains 
the  personality  of  God  apart  from  the  visible  world, 
regarding  spiritual  beings  as  somehow  incompatible 
with  matter.  The  pure  Pantheistic  idea  is  a  concep- 
tion of  universal  Divine  immanence,  of  the  infinite  in- 
terpenetrating the  finite ;  but  this  might  be  held  to 
exclude  the  notion  of  the  world's  moral  government. 
And  Tennyson's  Higher  Pantheism  seems  to  aim  at 
preserving  the  consciousness  of  a  discrimination  be- 
tween infinite  intelligence  and  the  mind,  whose 
perception  of  the  finite  world  involves,  or  perhaps 
necessitates,  a  recognition  of  infinity  beyond — 

"  The  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  seas,  the  hills  and  the 

plains — 
Are  not  these,  0  Soul,  the  Vision  of  Him  who  reigns  ? 

Earth,  these  solid  stars,  this  weight  of  body  and  limb, 
Are  they  not  sign  and  symbol  of  thy  division  from  Him." 

The  soul  has  broken  glimpses  of  the  Divine  vision; 
and  the  concluding  lines — 

"  And  the  ear  of  man  cannot  hear,  and  the  eye  of  man 

cannot  see  ; 
But  if  we  could  see  and  hear,  this  Vision — were  it  not  He?" 

might  be  interpreted  as  leading  up  to  the  doctrine  of 
Oriental  theosophy — that  only  by  escaping  from  sensa- 
tion, by  liberation  from  the  bodily  organs,  can  the  soul 
attain  clear  knowledge  of  or  unity  with  the  Divine 
Being. 

We  know  from  Tennyson's  earlier  writings  that  a 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       133 

shadow  of  despondency  and  gloom,  a  sense  of  the  in- 
completeness and  failures  of  life,  darkened  his  medita- 
tions on  the  condition  and  prospects  of  the  human  race ; 
and  his  later  poems  show  that  he  long  retained  this 
cloudy  outlook  upon  the  world.  In  1864  he  wrote  an 
unpublished  epigram  upon  "Immeasurable  Sadness"; 
and  if  a  collection  were  made  of  his  dramatic  mono- 
logues (which  would  be  well  worth  doing),  we  should  find 
that  as  time  went  on  he  dwelt  more  and  more  on  the 
unhappiness  of  mankind.  In  Locksley  Hall  and 
Maud  we  had  the  vague  dispirited  murmuring  of 
youth  against  the  world's  hard  discipline ;  but  we  also 
had  the  lyrics  of  youthful  ardour,  love,  and  beauty. 
In  the  pastorals  we  have  had  the  quiet  joys  and 
sorrows  of  the  country  folk.  In  his  latter-day  mono- 
logues the  tragic  view  of  things  appears  to  spread  and 
deepen ;  not  vague  discontent,  but  actual  misery  and 
anguish  are  his  themes ;  the  agony  of  Eizpah ;  the 
remorse,  in  The  Wreck,  of  one  who  deserted  her 
husband  and  lost  her  child;  the  vain  repentance,  in 
The  First  Quarrel,  of  a  widow  who  parted  with  her 
husband  in  foolish  anger — 

"  An'  the  wind  began  to  rise,  an'  I  thought  of  him  out  at  sea, 
An'  I  felt  I  had  been  to  blame  ;  he  was  always  kind  to  me. 
'  Wait  a  little,  my  lass,  I  am  sure  it  'ill  all  come  right ' — 
An'  the  boat  went  down  that  night — the  boat  went  down 
that  night." 

The  Children's  Hospital  is  full  of  pain  and  tears; 
while  in  Despair  we  have  the  fury  of  a  man  half 
crazed  by  misfortune,  who  has  been  resuscitated  after 
trying  to  drown  himself.  Instead  of  depicting  a 
mood,  a  reverie,  or  a  type  of  character,  he  now  takes 
up  a  striking  anecdote  of  actual  crime  or  suffering, 


134  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  gives  full  play  to  his  keen  sensibility  by  a  dramatic 
impersonation  of  the  strongest  emotions.  The  most 
poignant  situation,  more  powerfully  rendered  than  any 
other,  is  in  Kizpah,  where  a  mother  has  gathered  up 
the  fleshless  bones  of  her  son  who  has  been  hanged  in 
chains  for  a  robbery,  and  she  hears  the  night-wind 
bring  down  his  piteous  cries  to  her  : — 

"  Wailing,  wailing,  wailing,  the  wind  over  land  and  sea — 
And  Willy's  voice  in  the  wind — '0  mother,  come  out 

to  me.' 
Why  should  he  call  me  to-night,  when  he  knows  that  I 

cannot  go  ? 
For  the  downs  are  as  bright  as  day,  and  the  full  moon 

stares  at  the  snow. 

"  We  should  be  seen,  my  dear  ;  they  would  spy  us  out  of 

the  town. 
The  loud  black  nights  for  us,  and  the  storm  rushing  over 

the  down, 
When  I  cannot  see  my  own  hand,  but  am  led  by  the  creak 

of  the  chain, 
And  grovel  and  grope  for  my  son  till  I  find  myself 

drenched  with  the  rain." 

It  is  a  cruel  story,  barely  fit  for  poetry,  since  the 
simple  facts  are  so  heartrending  as  to  leave  little  scope 
for  imaginative  execution.  Yet  the  long  moaning  lines 
have  the  sound  of  misery ;  the  details  are  worked  up 
with  unflinching  precision ;  and  the  sensation  of  utter 
grief,  beyond  all  comfort  or  cure,  is  very  forcibly 
conveyed.  For  a  comparison  of  style,  between  the 
elaborate  and  the  primitive,  we  may  turn  to  the  tale 
of  Eizpah,  the  daughter  of  Aiah,  told  in  the  ancient 
chronicle  with  all  the  power  of  a  few  plain  words, 
without  ornament  or  commentary;  a  sight  as  it  was 
seen  on  the  Syrian  hills,  when  the  seven  sons  of  Saul 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       135 

were  hanged  in  propitiation  of  divine  wrath,  to  stay 
the  famine. 

If  we  may  now  endeavour  to  sketch  out  some 
general  view  of  Tennyson's  attitude  toward  the  great 
problems  of  human  existence,  it  becomes  necessary 
to  read  together,  in  this  connection,  the  poems  that 
he  published  at  different  times  in  his  later  years. 
In  Tennyson's  Eizpah  we  have  a  helpless  woman 
crushed  by  a  calamity  that  she  could  not  avert ;  our 
compassion  for  her  is  unqualified.  In  Despair,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  have  a  case  of  mental  pathology ; 
we  are  back  again  among  intellectual  difficulties  :  we 
have  to  consider  the  ethics  of  the  situation,  and  to 
suspend  our  sympathy  until  we  can  satisfy  ourselves 
that  a  man  deserves  it  who  would  fling  away  his  own 
life  and  his  wife's  because  he  has  lost  faith  in  God,  is 
miserable  in  this  world,  and  expects  nothing  from  the 
world  to  come  : — 

"  He  is  only  a  cloud  and  a  smoke  who  was  once  a  pillar  of 

fire, 
The  guess  of  a  worm  in  the  dust  and  the  shadow  of  its 

desire — 
Of  a  worm  as  it  writhes  in  a  world  of  the  weak  trodden 

down  by  the  strong, 
Of  a  dying  worm  in  a  world,  all  massacre,  murder,  and 

wrong." 

Here  indeed  we  have  the  lyric  of  despair,  and  the 
force  of  language  has  been  strained  to  its  uttermost 
pitch  in  expressing  it.  Yet  we  are  not  so  carried 
away  by  the  rush  of  the  daring  verse  as  to  read 
without  impatience  the  violent  railing  against  all 
things  human  and  divine  by  which  this  poor  fellow 
seeks  to  excuse  a  somewhat  abject  surrender  to 


136  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

misfortune  and  materialism.  Self-respect  and  the 
stoical  temper  unite  to  disown  his  behaviour;  and 
the  stress  laid  throughout  the  poem  on  the  disastrous 
consequences  of  unbelief  creates  a  suspicion  that  these 
frenzied  denunciations  are  delivered  with  an  eye  on  an 
audience;  for  the  desperate  half-drowned  man  makes 
shrewd  hits  at  infidel  science  and  strikes  out  against 
Calvinistic  Theology. 

"  What !  I  should  call  on  that  Infinite  Love  that  has  served 

us  so  well  ? 

Infinite  cruelty  rather  that  made  everlasting  Hell, 
Made  us,  foreknew  us,  foredoom'd  us,  and  does  what  he 

will  with  his  own  ; 
Better  our  dead  brute  mother  who  never  has  heard  us  groan." 

An  argumentative  intention  underlies  the  rhapsody, 
weakens  the  logic  of  the  situation,  and  produces  a  sense 
of  dramatic  insincerity.  In  one  single  line  by  Keats, 
"Here,  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan," 
there  is  a  deeper  echo  of  human  misery  than  in  all  this 
declamation,  which  belongs  rather  to  the  preacher 
than  to  the  poet.  But  it  reflects  the  shade  of  alarm 
that  seems  to  have  continually  darkened  Tennyson's 
mind  when  he  brooded  over  subjects  of  this  kind.  In 
religion  he  was  an  optimist,  holding  a  firm  belief  in 
the  divine  wisdom  and  goodness ;  though  the  aspect 
and  course  of  Nature  appears  to  have  alternately 
encouraged  and  disheartened  him ;  her  calm  beauty 
was  seen  to  cover  unmerciful  indifference ;  and  formal 
theology  brought  him  no  consolation.  His  imagina- 
tion was  haunted  by  a  fear  that  scientific  teaching 
would  extinguish  belief  in  a  spiritual  life  to  come, 
and  would  leave  mankind  desolate  in  a  vast  universe. 
One  evening,  we  are  told  in  the  Memoir, 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       137 

"  he  was  talking  on  death,  and  quoting  a  Parisian  story  of  a 
man  having  deliberately  ordered  and  eaten  a  good  dinner,  and 
having  afterwards  committed  suicide  by  covering  his  face  with 
a  chloroformed  handkerchief.  '  That's  what  I  should  do,'  he 
said,  '  if  I  thought  there  was  no  future  life.' " 

The  remark,  though  recorded,  can  hardly  have  been 
made  seriously;  but  it  contains  in  essence  the  senti- 
ment of  his  poem  "Despair,"  the  sombre  conception  of 
pessimism  as  almost  a  justification  of  suicide.  Unless 
the  miserable  condition  of  the  masses  can  be  im- 
proved— if  want,  unhappiness,  and  squalor  are  in- 
eradicable, as  they  seem  to  be — the  world,  for  the 
greater  number  of  mankind,  may  as  well  end  at  once 
instead  of  rolling  on  through  immense  periods.  And 
even  if  we  are  gradually  advancing  to  a  higher  and 
happier  life  for  all,  what  is  the  use  of  Progress  if  its  end 
is  to  be  a  final  extinction  of  all  animated  existence  upon 
this  planet  1  These  are  the  two  currents  of  thought 
that  appear  to  have  perplexed  Tennyson's  medita- 
tions, and  to  run  through  such  poems  as  Despair,  and 
through  "  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  after  " l — 

"  Is  it  well  that  while  we  range  with  Science,  glorying  in 

the  Time, 

City  children  soak  and  blacken  soul  and  sense  in  city 
slime  ? 

There  among  the  glooming  alleys  Progress  halts  on  palsied 

feet, 
Crime  and  hunger  cast  our  maidens  by  the  thousand  on 

the  street." 

And  he  still  harps,  in  the  same  poem,  on  his  feeling 

of  the  inutility  of  human  effort,  on  his  fear  lest  the 

dominion  of  science  should  deaden  our  spiritual  aspira- 

1  1887. 


138  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

tions ;  lie  reminds  us  that  our  transitory  existence 
in  time  is  little  worth,  that  progress  and  human 
perfectibility  are  illusions,  and  the  world's  history 
a  tale  of  unmeaning  bustle  and  agitation,  signifying 
nothing,  unless  we  keep  alive  the  spiritual  instincts 
and  the  hope  of  immortality — 

"  Truth,  for  Truth  is  Truth,  he  worshipt,  being  true  as  he 

was  brave  ; 

Good,  for  Good  is  Good,  he  follow'd,  yet  he  look'd  beyond 
the  grave, 

Wiser  there  than  you,  that  crowning  barren  Death  as  lord 

of  all, 
Deem  this  over-tragic  drama's  closing  curtain  is  the  pall ! 

Gone  for  ever  !  [  Ever  ?  no — for  since  our  dying  race  began, 
Ever,  ever,  and  for  ever  was  the  leading  light  of  man. 

Truth  for  truth,  and  good  for  good  !     The  Good,  the  True, 

the  Pure,  the  Just — 
Take  the  charm  '  For  ever '  from  them,  and  they  crumble 

into  dust." 

The  stanzas  have  the  rhythmic  swell  and  regular 
fall  of  a  chant  by  some  prophetic  seer  looking  back- 
ward and  forward  over  the  procession  of  ages,  the 
spectator  of  all  time  and  all  existence,  who  distrusts 
the  advance  of  civilisation,  disdains  mere  physical 
betterment,  and  foretells  dire  conflicts  in  which 
the  nobler  qualities  of  man  may  perish  in  strife 
against  misrule  and  sensuality.  Toward  the  end 
comes  a  gentler  and  more  hopeful  note ;  yet  the 
burden  of  the  poem  is  still,  as  with  In  Memoriam, 
the  oppressive  immensity  of  space  and  time,  in  which 
religions  and  philosophic  systems  are  lost  like  planks 
in  an  ocean,  and  those  who  cling  to  them  are  tossed 
about  until  they  drop  into  the  depths — 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       139 

"  Forward,  backward,  backward,  forward,  in  the  immeasur- 
able sea, 

Sway'd  by  vaster  ebbs  and  flows  than  can  be  known  to  you 
or  me. 

All  the  suns — are  these  but  symbols  of  innumerable  man, 
Man  or  Mind  that  sees  a  shadow  of  the  planner  or  the  plan? 

What  are  men  that  He  should  heed  us  ?  cried  the  king  of 

sacred  song ; 
Insects  of  an  hour,  that  hourly  work  their  brother  insect 

wrong, 

While  the  silent  Heavens  roll,  and  Suns  along  their  fiery  way, 
All  their  planets  whirling  round  them,  flash  a  million  miles 
a  day. 

Many  an  ^Eon  moulded  earth  before  her  highest,  man,  was 

born, 
Many  an  Mon  too  may  pass  when  earth  is  manless  and 

forlorn." 

Among  these  illimitable  periods  a  life  of  seventy  or 
eighty  years  is  as  nothing,  and  human  efforts  and 
aspirations  sink  into  insignificance ;  yet  the  old  squire 
has  the  consolation  that  it  is  something  to  have  had 
one's  day,  to  have  shared  the  lot  of  mankind  and  to 
have  helped  one's  neighbours,  and  to  stand  at  life's 
close  in  the  old  house,  which  is  full  of  early  memories 
of  joy  and  sorrow.  And  so  falls  the  curtain  on 
Locksley  Hall,  the  conclusion  of  a  romantic  drama 
that  runs  in  a  fragmentary  way  through  so  many 
of  Tennyson's  poems.  If  we  connect  the  scattered 
links,  we  have  the  conception  of  fretful  youth  with 
ardent  hopes  and  ambitions,  of  a  passionate  attach- 
ment that  is  broken  off  rudely  and  violently,  of  revolt 
against  social  injustice,  of  long  wrestling  with  the 


140  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

spectres  of  intellectual  doubt  and  depression,  of 
gradual  schooling  under  the  world's  hard  discipline, 
and  of  an  old  age  passing  quietly  amid  the  scenes  of 
boyhood,  still  troubled  by  the  unintelligible  enigma 
of  the  Universe,  but  with  a  softened  retrospect  over 
the  past,  and  with  such  resignation  as  may  be  got 
from  trusting  that  the  immeasurable  course  of  Evolu- 
tion may  tend  to  some  far  distant  state  of  rest  and 
happiness. 

In  Vastness l  the  figure  of  individual  man  has  dis- 
appeared, and  we  have  the  same  gloomy  panorama  of 
human  energy  and  suffering  contemplated  from  the 
point  of  its  utter  vanity  and  nothingness.  The  full 
organ-notes  reverberate  in  lines  that  touch  the  highest 
scale  of  sublimity  and  grandeur  in  Tennyson's  verse; 
but  the  poem  is  too  heavily  charged  with  contrasted 
images,  and  the  light  is  too  lurid — 

"  Raving  politics,   never  at  rest — as  this  poor  earth's  pale 

history  runs, — 

What  is  it  all  but  a  trouble  of  ants  in  the  gleam  of  a 
million  million  of  suns. 

What  the  philosophies,  all  the  sciences,  poesy,  varying  voices 

of  prayer  ? 
All  that  is  noblest,  all  that  is  basest,  all  that  is  filthy  with 

all  that  is  fair  ? 

What  is  it  all,  if  we  all  of  us  end  but  in  being  our  own 

corpse-coffins  at  last, 
SwaUow'd  in  Vastness,  lost  in  Silence,  drown'd  in  the  deeps 

of  a  meaningless  Past  ? " 

The  feeling  that  man  is  but  dust  and  shadow,  animated 

for  a  brief  moment,  that  he  is  born  to  sorrow,  and 

1  1889. 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        141 

that  his  works  perish,  is  primeval  in  poetry  and  in 
religion;  the  starry  heavens  suggested  it  to  the 
ancient  sages  and  preachers  no  less  vividly  than  all 
the  discoveries  of  astronomy  and  geology.  They 
confronted  the  eternal  silences  mournfully,  yet  with 
tranquil  intrepidity ;  they  drew  lessons  of  composure 
and  ethical  fortitude  from  the  spectacle ;  they  used  it 
to  rebuke  cowardly  fear  and  superstition.  In  the  East 
they  relied  upon  the  soul's  gradual  emancipation  until 
it  should  escape  into  immateriality  from  the  demon 
that  afflicts  it  with  sensation.  If  the  modern  poet's 
imagination  appears  more  overpowered  by  alarm,  by 
a  kind  of  terror  lest  the  mainsprings  of  our  moral 
and  spiritual  activities  should  give  way,  we  have 
to  consider  that  the  tremendous  expansion  of  the 
scientific  record  in  these  latter  days  seems  to  have 
affected  Tennyson  like  a  sentence  of  inflexible  pre- 
destination, overshadowing  his  delight  in  the  world's 
glories  by  a  foreknowledge  of  its  inevitable  doom. 
The  vision  which  unrolled  itself  before  his  imagination, 
of  the  blind  mechanical  evolution  of  a  world  "  dark 
with  griefs  and  graves,"  of  human  energy  squandered 
on  a  planet  that  is  passing  from  fire  to  frost,  evidently 
fascinated  his  mind  more  and  more,  and  possessed  it  with 
dismay.  That  mankind  and  their  works  must  perish, 
slowly  or  suddenly,  leaving  not  a  wrack  behind,  has 
been  the  warning  of  all  religions,  the  foundation  of  all 
beliefs  in  a  future  life;  and  the  poem  of  Vastness 
gives  the  same  warning  in  the  terms  of  science,  but  with- 
out the  same  clear  note  of  intrepidity,  or  of  confidence 
in  revealed  promises.  Yet  Tennyson  has  his  antidote 
to  Despair.  Amid  the  general  shipwreck  of  positive 
creeds,  formal  theologies,  political  and  philosophic 


142  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

systems,  all  of  them  powerless  to  affect  man's  ultimate 
destiny,  we  have  gleams  of  spiritual  illumination  seen 
on  the  far-distant  horizon ;  we  have  a  profound  faith 
in  the  moral  direction  of  cosmic  laws,  in  a  spiritual 
basis  of  all  being,  in  a  kinship  and  affinity  between  the 
spiritual  element  in  man  and  the  divine  soul  which 
moves  the  whole  universe.  He  believes  with  Coleridge 
that  the  world  of  sense  is  in  some  manner  the  mani- 
festation of  supersensual  realities.  That  Love  is 
stronger  than  Death,  and  in  some  form  or  feeling 
will  survive  it,  is  the  idea  that  was  expressed  in  some 
of  the  most  musical  and  melancholy  stanzas  of  "In 
Memoriam  " — 

"  Yet  if  some  voice  that  man  could  trust 
Should  murmur  from  the  narrow  house, 
'  The  cheeks  drop  in  ;  the  body  bows  ; 
Man  dies  :  nor  is  there  hope  in  dust : ' 

Might  I  not  say  ?  '  Yet  even  here, 

But  for  one  hour,  O  Love,  I  strive 

To  keep  so  sweet  a  thing  alive  : ' 
But  I  should  turn  mine  ears  and  hear 

The  meanings  of  the  homeless  sea, 

The  sound  of  streams  that  swift  or  slow 
Draw  down  JEonian  hills,  and  sow 

The  dust  of  continents  to  be  ; 

And  Love  would  answer  with  a  sigh, 
'  The  sound  of  that  forgetful  shore 
Will  change  my  sweetness  more  and  more, 

Half-dead  to  know  that  I  shall  die.' 

O  me,  what  profits  it  to  put 

An  idle  case  ?    If  Death  were  seen 

At  first  as  Death,  Love  had  not  been, 
Or  been  in  narrowest  working  shut." 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       143 

And  in  Akbar's  Dream,1  written  many  years   after- 
ward, we  have  the  mystic's  invocation  of  Allah  as  the 

Sun  of  Love — 

"  But  dimly  seen 

Here,  till  the  mortal  morning  mists  of  earth 
Fade  in  the  noon  of  heaven,  when  creed  and  race 
Shall  bear  false  witness,  each  of  each,  no  more, 
But  find  their  limits  by  the  larger  light, 
And  overstep  them,  moving  easily 
Thro'  after-ages  in  the  love  of  Truth, 
The  truth  of  Love." 

He  believes  that  the  deepest  human  affections  are  signs 
and  symbols  of  our  participation  in  something  divine. 

The  Ancient  Sage,  another  poem  that  appeared 
toward  the  close  of  Tennyson's  life,  is  perhaps  the 
least  indefinite  exposition  of  his  hopeful  philosophy. 
He  touches  here  upon  the  conviction,  so  prevalent 
in  Oriental  mysticism,  that  the  entire  phantasmagoria 
of  sense  perception  is  essentially  deceptive  and  unsub- 
stantial, an  illusion  that  will  vanish  with  nearer  and 
clearer  apprehension  of  the  Divine  Presence  which 
sustains  the  whole  system  of  being — 

"  If  the  Nameless  should  withdraw  from  all 
Thy  frailty  counts  most  real,  all  thy  world 
Might  vanish  like  thy  shadow  in  the  dark." 

We  are  now  in  darkness,  but  larger  knowledge  may 

come — 

"  And  we,  the  poor  earth's  dying  race,  and  yet 
No  phantoms,  watching  from  a  phantom  shore 
Await  the  last  and  largest  sense  to  make 
The  phantom  walls  of  this  illusion  fade, 
And  show  us  that  the  world  is  wholly  fair." 

The  faint  recollections   that  flit   through   the    brain 
1  1892. 


144  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  childhood  are  described  in  lines  which  have  all 
Tennyson's  delicate  susceptibility  to  the  lightest 
impressions  of  the  eye  or  ear — 

"  The  first  gray  streak  of  earliest  summer-dawn, 
The  last  long  stripe  of  waning  crimson  gloom, 
As  if  the  late  and  early  were  but  one — 
A  height,  a  broken  grange,  a  grove,  a  flower 
Had  murmurs  '  Lost  and  gone  and  lost  and  gone  ! ' 
A  breath,  a  whisper — some  divine  farewell — 
Desolate  sweetness — far  and  far  away." 

It  may  be  a  world  of  flitting  shadows,  yet  there  is 
work  to  be  done,  and  light  beyond — 

"  Let  be  thy  wail,  and  help  thy  fellow  men." 

Amid  the  scenes  of  lust  and  luxury,  which  chain  down 
the  soul — 

"  Look  higher,  then — perchance — thou  mayest — beyond 
A  hundred  ever-rising  mountain  lines 
And  past  the  range  of  Night  and  Shadow — see 
The  high-heaven  dawn  of  more  than  mortal  day 
Strike  on  the  Mount  of  Vision." 

There  is  hesitation  in  the  Sage's  accents ;  and  the  poet 
can  do  little  more  than  enjoin  us  to  follow  the  gleams  of 
light  that  pierce  the  clouds  which  envelop  our  mortal 
existence.  Science  threatens  to  keep  us  wandering  in 
an  interminable  labyrinth.  Yet  Science  may  be  a 
symbolical  language  shadowing  forth  divine  truths,  a 
cypher  by  which  those  who  have  the  key  may  read,  in 
glimpses  and  occasional  rays  of  light,  a  message  of 
secret  encouragement ;  and  Evolution,  a  theory  of 
futile  transformations  in  the  physical  order,  may  be 
typical  of  the  upward  striving  and  gradual  eman- 
cipation of  man  as  a  spiritual  being.  Some  such 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       145 

conclusions  as  these  we  can  extract  and  piece  together 
from  Tennyson's  later  meditations ;  and  if  they  are  not 
always  distinct  and  coherent,  we  have  to  remember 
that  systematic  philosophy  lies  outside  the  proper 
range  of  a  poet's  art  or  his  mission. 

In  Tiresias  the  poet  goes  back  again  to  antiquity, 
to  the  legend  of  the  blind  prophet  who  is  in  communion 
with  the  deities,  and  who,  when  Thebes  is  beleaguered 
and  about  to  fall,  proclaims  the  Divine  decree  that 
one  man  must  devote  himself  to  death  for  the  salvation 
of  his  state  and  people.  We  have  in  this  story  the 
inveterate  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  human  sacrifice  that 
has  run  through  the  superstitions  of  all  ages  and 
countries ;  it  contains  the  moral  idea  of  self-devotion 
mixed  up  with  the  notion  that  the  angry  gods  may 
be  appeased  by  a  precious  victim;  and  the  modern 
poet  transfigures  the  legend  into  a  lofty  encomium 
upon  the  glory  of  patriotic  martyrdom — 

"  My  son, 

No  sound  is  breathed  so  potent  to  coerce, 
And  to  conciliate,  as  their  names  who  dare 
For  that  sweet  mother  land  which  gave  them  birth 
Nobly  to  do,  nobly  to  die.     Their  names, 
Graven  on  memorial  columns,  are  a  song 
Heard  in  the  future  ;  few,  but  more  than  wall 
And  rampart,  their  examples  reach  a  hand 
Far  thro'  all  years,  and  everywhere  they  meet 
And  kindle  generous  purpose,  and  the  strength 
To  mould  it  into  action  pure  as  theirs." 

It  is  refreshing,  after  the  dreary  visions  of  a  ruined 
and  silent  world,  of  the  inutility  of  all  human  effort, 
and  of  the  cold  eschatology  predicted  by  Science,  to 
look  back  again  in  Tiresias  on  the  ancient  world, 
to  a  time  when  men  were  citizens  of  a  petty  state 
K 


146  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

instead  of  a  vast  empire,  trained  to  meet  real  perils 
with  fortitude  and  endurance,  thinking  always  of 
the  fortunes  of  their  people,  and  knowing  nothing  of 
the  remote  destinies  of  mankind,  nor  balancing  two 
worlds,  the  present  and  the  future,  against  each  other. 
In  such  conditions  of  existence  their  joys  and  griefs, 
their  fears  and  hopes,  were  simple,  direct,  and  con- 
fined within  a  narrow  compass.  As  the  idea  of 
progress  and  the  perfectibility  of  society  had 
little  or  no  hold  on  them,  so  they  were  not  deeply 
discomposed  by  the  knowledge  that  all  things  are 
mutable  and  transitory.  As  their  minds  were  neither 
troubled  by  the  prospect  of  an  immeasurable  future 
for  the  earth,  nor  by  the  discovery  of  its  remote  past, 
so  they  could  concentrate  their  efforts  and  aspirations 
on  the  ideals  which  ennoble  the  present  life,  on  courage, 
temperance,  and  justice,  on  making  the  best  of  it  by 
harmonising  the  inevitable  conditions  of  existence.  To 
the  poets  and  philosophers  of  antiquity,  who  knew  well 
that  the  highest  truths  lie  beyond  experience,  the 
rebellious  outburst  of  Despair  and  the  blank  dismay 
of  Vastness  would  have  appeared  irrational  and  pro 
f  oundly  inconsistent  with  the  sense  of  duty  and  virtue, 
tending  to  obliterate  the  distinctions  of  good  and  evil, 
and  to  degrade  all  human  society  to  the  level  of  insects. 
From  the  prison-house  of  materialism  Tennyson  him- 
self found  release  in  his  firm  trust  that  all  things  are 
divinely  ordered,  and  that  annihilation  is  inconceivable; 
yet  his  reflections  on  death  are  constantly  tinged  with 
misgivings.  The  verses  added  as  an  epilogue  to 
Tiresias  have  the  full  spontaneous  flow  in  perfect 
measure,  with  a  sure  echoing  stroke  of  the  rhymes, 
that  attest  consummate  workmanship.  In  the  pre- 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       U7 

lude  he  had  greeted  his  old  friend,  Edward  FitzGerald : 
and  when  he  wrote  these  final  stanzas  he  had  heard  of 
his  death — 

"  The  tolling  of  his  funeral  bell 
Broke  on  my  Pagan  Paradise. 

Gone  into  darkness,  that  full  light 

Of  friendship  !  past,  in  sleep,  away 
By  night,  into  the  deeper  night ! 

The  deeper  night  ?     A  clearer  day 
Than  our  poor  twilight  dawn  on  earth — 

If  night,  what  barren  toil  to  be  ! 
What  life,  so  maim'd  by  night,  were  worth 

Our  living  out  ?    Not  mine  to  me." 

"  The  doubtful  doom  of  human  kind  "  haunts  his 
imagination ;  he  dwells  upon  the  idea  that  Song  will 
vanish  in  the  Vast,  will  end  in  stillness,  and  he  glances 
back  regretfully  at  the  pagan  paradise — at  those  who 

"  Scarce  could  see,  as  now  we  see, 

The  man  in  Space  and  Time, 
So  drew  perhaps  a  happier  lot 

Than  ours,  who  rhyme  to-day. 
The  fires  that  arch  this  dusky  dot — 

Yon  myriad- worlded  way — 
The  vast  sun-clusters'  gather'd  blaze, 

World-isles  in  lonely  skies, 
Whole  heavens  within  themselves,  amaze 

Our  brief  humanities." 

The  conclusion,  sooner  or  later,  of  the  human  drama,  the 
finality  of  all  earthly  existence —  these  ideas  have  been 
the  articles  of  primary  belief  in  every  religion,  and  belong 
to  the  presentiments  and  expectations  that  are  natural 
to  the  human  mind,  for  we  are  surrounded  by  decay 
and  death,  and  the  illimitable  is  an  inconceivable  idea. 


148  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

But  in  apocalyptic  predictions  the  earth  itself  was 
to  be  destroyed  and  disappear  with  all  it  contained, 
was  to  founder  like  a  ship  in  mid-ocean,  or  like  a 
volcanic  island  sinking  suddenly.  It  is  the  prospect 
of  this  planet,  a  minute  and  negligible  part  of  the 
universe,  rolling  round  in  its  diurnal  course  after  man 
and  his  works  have  vanished,  of  inanimate  matter  sur- 
viving with  entire  unconcern  all  vital  energies,  that 
seems  to  have  oppressed  the  poet  with  dejection  at  the 
thought  of  mortal  man's  utter  insignificance.  In  this 
mood  life  lost  for  him  all  interest  and  meaning,  except 
through  faith  in  the  perpetuation  of  the  spiritual 
particle;  and  his  own  quotation  from  Marvell  in- 
dicates the  prevailing  bent  of  his  reflections — 

"  At  my  back  I  always  hear 
Time's  winged  chariot  hurrying  near, 
And  yonder  all  before  us  lie 
The  deserts  of  eternity." 

To  such  feelings  his  poetry  gave  sublimity  and  a 
transcendent  range  of  contemplation ;  yet  it  must  be 
remarked  that  they  have  a  tendency  to  weigh  down 
the  mainsprings  of  human  activity  They  are  akin  to 
the  subtle  opiates  of  Oriental  philosophy,  which  teaches 
the  nothingness  of  sensuous  life ;  but  fortunately  the 
energetic  races  of  the  world  are  not  easily  discouraged. 
For  it  is  the  inevitability  of  death  that  gives  a 
stimulus  to  life ;  and  strenuous  minds  draw  a  motive 
for  exertion,  for  working  while  the  light  lasts,  from 
that  very  sense  of  the  brevity  of  human  existence  and 
the  uncertainty  of  what  may  lie  beyond,  which,  although 
Tennyson  fought  against  it  manfully,  did  undoubtedly 
haunt  his  meditations  and  depress  the  spirit  of  his  later 
inspirations.  He  relied,  indeed,  upon  the  sense  of 


v.]        PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       149 

right,  of  duty,  and  of  trust  in  the  final  purpose  of  a 
Creator;  nevertheless,  he  seems  to  have  been  con- 
tinually disturbed  by  the  fear  lest  the  scientific  fore- 
cast of  blank  desolation  for  this  planet,  and  the 
uncertainty  of  a  future  conscious  existence  for  man- 
kind, might  fatally  weaken  the  power  of  these  high 
motives  to  fortify  human  conduct,  and  to  sustain 
virtue.  Yet  in  the  four  volumes  of  Jowett's  Plato,  which 
he  received  from  the  translator  in  1871,  he  must  have 
found — not  only  in  the  dialogues,  but  also  in  Jowett's 
characteristic  commentaries — that  loftier  conception  of 
service  in  the  cause  of  truth  and  humanity,  which  can 
inspire  men  to  go  forward  undauntedly,  whatever  may 
be  their  destiny  beyond  the  grave. 

In  discussing  Tennyson's  poetry  and  his  intellectual 
tendencies  it  has  been  necessary  to  disregard  chrono- 
logical sequence  and  to  anticipate,  for  the  purpose  of 
a  connected  survey.  We  must  now  take  up  again 
the  chronicle  of  his  elder  life,  which  is  very  slightly 
marked  by  events,  except  when  increasing  years 
brought  ever-rising  fame  and  public  honours.  In 
1869  he  was  made  an  Honorary  Fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge ;  and  in  1873  Mr.  Gladstone 
proposed  a  baronetcy,  but  such  promotion  had 
evidently  no  attraction  for  him.  In  1874  this  offer 
was  repeated  by  Mr.  Disraeli  (who  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  aware  that  it  had  been  already  made)  in 
a  high-flying  sententious  letter,  evidently  attuned 
to  the  deeper  harmonies  of  the  mysterious  relations 
between  genius  and  government. 

"  A  government  should  recognize  intellect.  It  elevates  and 
sustains  the  spirit  of  a  nation.  But  it  is  an  office  not  easy  to 


150  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

fulfil ;  for  if  it  falls  into  favouritism  and  the  patronage  of 
mediocrity,  instead  of  raising  the  national  sentiment,  it  might 
degrade  and  debase  it.  Her  Majesty,  by  the  advice  of  Her 
Ministers,  has  testified  in  the  Arctic  expedition,  and  will  in 
other  forms,  her  sympathy  with  science.  But  it  is  desirable 
that  the  claims  of  high  letters  should  be  equally  acknowledged. 
This  is  not  so  easy  a  matter,  because  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  the  test  of  merit  cannot  be  so  precise  in  literature 
as  in  science.  Nevertheless,  etc.,  etc."  1 

The  honour  was  nevertheless  again  respectfully 
declined,  with  a  suggestion,  pronounced  by  authority 
to  be  impracticable,  that  it  might  be  reserved  for 
conferment  upon  his  son  after  his  own  death. 

Mrs.  Tennyson's  journal  for  this  time — when  they 
lived  alternately  between  Farringford  and  Aldworth, 
making  an  annual  visit  to  London — is  full  of  interest, 
recording  various  sayings  and  doings,  conversation, 
correspondence,  anecdotes,  and  glimpses  of  notable 
visitors — Tourgueneff,  Longfellow,  Jenny  Lind,  Huxley, 
and  Gladstone,  to  the  last  of  whom  he  read  aloud  the 
Holy  Grail.  At  the  house  of  G.  H.  Lewes  he  read 
Guinevere,  which  made  George  Eliot  weep;  and  at 
home  he  was  visited  by  General  Charles  Gordon, 
to  whom  the  poems  were  a  solace  and  a  delight  in 
perilous  days  at  Khartoum.  There  was  a  project 
of  bringing  about  a  meeting  with  Newman,  between 
whom  and  Tennyson  an  exchange,  or  possibly  a  col- 
lision, of  philosophic  ideas  would  have  been  well  worth 
recording;  but  nothing  came  of  it,  and  the  meeting 
remains  a  good  subject  for  an  Imaginary  Conversation. 
For  Tennyson's  table-talk  at  this  period  readers  must 
go  to  the  Memoir,  from  which  it  would  be  unfair  to 

1  Memoir. 


v.]       PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       151 

pick  many  sayings  or  anecdotes  wherewith  to  season 
these  pages.  He  had  much  of  the  epigrammatic 
faculty;  he  could  condense  a  criticism  into  a  few 
words,  as  when  he  said  that  Miss  Austen  understood 
the  smallness  of  life  to  perfection ;  he  could  put  colour 
into  it,  as  when  he  remarks  that  poets  enrich  the 
blood  of  the  world;  and  he  could  frame  a  thought, 
not  always  in  itself  very  precious,  with  great  felicity. 
Of  amusing  anecdotes  that  struck  his  fancy,  or  were 
collected  by  his  friends  to  show  the  wide  popularity  of 
his  poems,  there  are  many ;  for  at  Farringford  he  was 
the  cynosure  of  neighbouring  eyes,  while  he  was  hunted 
by  tourists  abroad,  and  at  home  the  visitors  sat  at  his 
feet.  He  had  indeed  at  this  time  to  pass  the  ordeal 
of  somewhat  unqualified  adulation,  though  one  intimate 
friend,  Mrs.  Cameron,  never  failed  to  speak  out  her 
mind.  His  discourses  on  poetry,  with  his  favourite 
quotations,  prove  a  keen  discrimination  of  literary 
quality,  with  a  mastery  of  technique  that  is  the  gift 
of  a  practical  artist.  Among  his  quotations  may  be 
noticed,  as  a  curiosity,  the  lines  from  Henry  Till.1 : — 

"  To-day,  the  French, 

All  clinquant,  all  in  gold,  like  heathen  gods, 
Shone  down  the  English  ;  and,  to-morrow,  they 
Made  Britain,  India," 

where  Shakespeare,  in  his  large  manner  of  illustrating 
the  Oriental  glitter  of  the  English  array  on  the  Field 
of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  writes  as  one  suddenly  possessed 
by  the 

"  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come," 

1  Act  I.  Scene  i. 


152  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  falls  unconsciously  into  a  vision  of  the  future. 
For  nearly  two  centuries  later  it  was  the  contest 
between  France  and  England  in  the  East  that  did 
actually  and  directly  lead  to  the  making  of  British 
India. 

The  diary  is  a  faithful  and  valuable  memorial  of 
English  country  life  at  its  best  toward  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Living  quietly  with  his 
family,  he  was  in  constant  intercourse  with  the  most 
distinguished  men  of  his  day,  and  was  himself  honoured 
of  them  all;  a  society  that  gave  him  all  that  he 
desired,  and  not  more  than  he  most  undoubtedly 
deserved. 

In  1878  came  the  marriage  of  his  younger  son 
Lionel  to  Miss  Locker.  Seven  years  afterward,  in 
1885,  they  made  a  journey  to  India,  where  Lionel 
unfortunately  caught  a  fever  of  which  he  died  on 
the  homeward  voyage.  Tennyson's  verses  To  the 
Marquis  of  Dufferin  and  Ava,  always  the  most 
largehearted  and  generous  of  friends,  acknowledge 
the  kindness  and  unmeasured  hospitality  which  his 
eon  received  during  his  illness  from  the  Viceroy  of 
India — 

"  But  while  my  life's  late  eve  endures, 
Nor  settles  into  hueless  gray, 
My  memories  of  his  briefer  day 
Will  mix  with  love  for  you  and  yours." 

With  Carlyle  Tennyson  remained  in  constant  inter- 
course personally,  and  with  FitzGerald  by  letters,  ex- 
cept for  a  short  visit  to  him  at  Woodbridge  in  1876 — 
"the  lonely  philosopher,  a  'man  of  humorous-melan- 
choly-mark,' with  his  gray  floating  locks,  sitting  among 
his  doves."  They  never  met  again  afterwards.  It  is  a 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY       153 

rarity  in  modern  life  that  two  such  men  as  Tennyson 
and  FitzGerald,  whose  mutual  friendship  was  never 
shaken,  should  have  met  but  once  in  twenty-five 
years  of  life,  although  divided  by  no  longer  space 
than  could  be  traversed  by  a  three  hours'  railway 
journey.  In  FitzGerald's  judgment  Tennyson  reached 
the  grand  climacteric  of  his  poetry  in  the  volumes 
of  1842,  for  the  Idylls,  and  the  later  moral  and 
didactic  strain  of  verse,  were  not  to  his  taste ; 
though  in  1873  he  wrote  to  Tennyson,  who  had 
sent  him  Gareth  and  Lynette,  that  he  admired 
many  passages  in  the  Idylls.  It  may  be  true, 
as  is  remarked  in  the  Memoir,  that  FitzGerald's 
sequestered  way  of  life  kept  him  in  a  critical  groove, 
and  that  he  was  crotchety  is  confessed  by  himself. 
Nevertheless,  in  the  unanimous  chorus  of  applause 
from  all  the  illustrious  men  of  that  time,  the 
dissentient  voice  of  the  scholarly  recluse,  always 
admiring  and  affectionate,  was  worth  listening  to ; 
and  many  may  question  whether  the  settled  opinion 
of  a  later  generation  will  find  much  fault  with  it. 


CHAPTEE    VI 

THE  PLAYS 

WHEN  Tennyson,  in  1875,  brought  out  his  play  of 
Queen  Mary,  he  made  his  entry  upon  a  field  into 
which  no  first-class  English  poet  had  ventured  for  a 
long  time  previously.  Coleridge's  play  of  Eemorse 
had  a  fair  run,  because  it  was  written  down  to  the 
level  of  popular  taste;  and  his  poetic  genius  had  little 
to  do  with  its  success.  Shelley  and  Byron  wrote 
dramatic  poetry,  and  Shelley  believed  that  The  Cenci 
was  well  fitted  for  the  stage,  but  it  never  appeared  on 
the  boards,  although  the  figure  of  Beatrice  is  undoubt- 
edly drawn  with  great  tragic  power.  Byron  openly 
declared  that  his  dramas  were  not  written  with  the 
slightest  view  to  the  stage ;  and,  in  short,  we  must  go 
back  to  Goldsmith  for  a  poet  who  was  also  a  successful 
playwright.  None  of  these  poets  had  taken  their  plots 
or  characters  from  English  history ;  so  that  there  was 
novelty  in  Tennyson's  design  of  continuing  the  line  of 
Shakespeare's  English  chronicle-plays  by  dramatising 
great  periods  of  our  history.  In  France  the  historic 
drama  came  in  for  a  few  years  with  Victor  Hugo  and 
the  romanticists ;  yet  it  may  be  affirmed  that  no 
French  dramatist  of  the  first  order  has  ever  founded  a 
play  on  the  annals  of  France;  and  we  may  suppose 
that  the  classic  taste  and  style,  which  rejects  details 
and  local  colouring,  dealing  in  noble  sentiments  rhetori- 

154 


CHAP,  vi.]  THE  PLAYS  155 

cally  delivered,  had  discouraged  and  thrown  out  of 
fashion  any  attempt  to  exhibit  on  the  stage  famous 
national  events  and  personages,  surrounding  them  with 
the  variety  of  character  and  circumstance  that  belong 
to  real  life.  Mrs.  Tennyson  notes  in  her  diary  for 
April  1874  that  her  husband  had  thought  of  William 
the  Silent  as  the  subject  for  a  play ;  but  had  said  that 
our  own  history  was  so  great,  and  that  he  liked  English 
subjects  and  knew  most  about  them,  so  that  he  had 
begun  Queen  Mary. 

From  the  point  of  view  taken  in  the  foregoing 
observations,  therefore,  we  have  a  new  departure  in 
this  play,  which  introduces  us  to  that  most  critical 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  English  people,  when  violent 
religious  changes,  a  doubtful  succession  to  the  crown, 
and  foreign  marriages  had  spread  terror,  suspicion,  and 
discord  throughout  England  and  Scotland,  producing 
that  fermentation  of  conspiracies,  rebellions,  and  per- 
secutions which  is  generated  by  a  mixture  of  religion 
and  politics  at  a  high  temperature.  The  cardinal 
point  of  the  situation  was  that  in  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century  the  successions  to  both  the  English 
and  Scottish  crowns  had  fallen  to  daughters  ;  and  that 
this  had  occurred  almost  simultaneously  with  the 
culmination  of  the  great  revolt  against  the  Papacy, 
with  the  fierce  religious  wars  in  western  Europe,  and 
with  the  contest  between  France  and  Spain  for  ascend- 
ency. The  Emperor  Charles  V.  married  his  son  to 
Mary  Tudor  of  England  in  order  to  secure  an  English 
alliance.  As  a  counter  move,  Henry  II.  of  France 
married  the  Dauphin  to  Mary  Stuart  of  Scotland ;  and 
so  the  two  Catholic  queens,  representing  antagonistic 
politics,  were  ruling  two  kingdoms,  in  both  of  which 


156  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

a  powerful  party  of  nobles,  with  strong  popular 
support,  were  stubborn  adherents  of  the  Reformation. 

"  Mary  of  Scotland,  married  to  your  Dauphin, 
Would  make  our  England,  France  ; 
Mary  of  England,  joining  hands  with  Spain, 
Would  be  too  strong  for  France." 1 

No  more  arduous  or  complicated  position,  sure  to  develop 
character,  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  women  than  that  of 
either  Queen.  Mary  Stuart's  life  and  death  were 
infinitely  the  more  romantic  and  pitiful ;  a  beautiful 
frail  woman  swept  onward  as  if  by  Fate  to  death  on 
the  scaffold,  a  sacrifice  to  implacable  policy,  fulfils 
the  highest  conditions  of  a  tragic  drama.  Shakespeare 
might  have  written  it,  if  she  had  not  been  so  nearly  of 
his  own  time.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  romance, 
no  play  of  wild  passion,  no  fateful  catastrophe,  in  the 
life  of  Mary  Tudor ;  she  had  a  touch  of  her  father's 
courage,  but  also  of  his  cruelty ;  she  was  a  dull  woman 
with  no  feminine  charm ;  her  reign  was  one  long 
failure ;  and  she  left  the  grand  part  in  history  to  be 
taken  up  and  played  royally  by  her  sister  Elizabeth. 
One  might  therefore  say  that  Tennyson,  in  fixing  upon 
Queen  Mary  and  her  reign,  had  chosen  a  difficult 
subject  for  the  theatre,  since  the  leading  character  is 
neither  heroic  nor  intensely  pathetic ;  she  was  a  miser- 
able disappointed  woman  whose  name  has  an  indelible 
stain  of  blood  upon  it.  Nevertheless  Tennyson's  play 
is  a  dramatic  reading  of  authentic  history,  executed 
with  much  animation  and  with  imaginative  force  in 
the  presentation  of  character.  Although  the  interest 
in  the  story  belongs  rather  to  the  events  and  circum- 

1  Act  i.  Scene  v. 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  157 

stances  than  to  the  persons,  yet  the  poet  fills  in  skilfully 
the  historic  outlines ;  he  gives  elevation  to  the  speeches 
and  sentiments;  he  realises  for  us  the  motives  and 
actions  of  men  and  women  who  paid  forfeit  for  a  lost 
cause  at  the  stake  or  on  the  scaffold;  he  exhibits 
lively  pictures  of  the  court  and  the  street.  He  con- 
trives to  invest  Mary  with  some  dignity,  and  to  extract 
from  us  some  scanty  sympathy  with  her  unhappiness ; 
though  it  is  impossible  to  make  of  her  the  central 
figure  on  which  the  eyes  of  an  audience  should  be 
riveted  as  the  action  proceeds.  The  main  interest  is 
rather  political  than  personal.  Cranmer,  Gardiner, 
Wyatt,  White  the  Lord  Mayor,  Paget  and  Pole, 
Noailles  and  Kenard,  pass  over  the  stage  and  discharge 
their  historical  parts  in  speeches  full  of  concise  and 
characteristic  expression ;  but  to  bring  all  these  parts 
into  dramatic  unity,  and  to  make  an  imaginative 
plot  out  of  a  page  of  familiar  history,  was  probably 
beyond  the  power  even  of  first-rate  genius.  Tennyson 
himself  perceived  that  the  older  chronicles,  which  pre- 
served only  the  striking  features  of  the  time,  allowed 
greater  scope  to  the  creative  faculty  than  a  precise 
knowledge  of  men  and  events  which  binds  a  poet  down 
to  the  facts,  for  the  necessity  of  being  accurate  im- 
pairs the  illusion;  and  the  historical  dramatist  finds 
himself  more  at  ease  in  a  distant  half-known  age,  or 
anywhere  else  than  in  his  own  country.  Mary  Stuart 
and  Mary  Tudor  have  been  brought  on  the  stage  by 
foreigners,  Schiller  and  Victor  Hugo,  in  the  latter  case 
with  indifferent  success.  Moreover,  although  local 
colours  and  circumstantial  details  give  the  scenes  a 
realistic  impressiveness,  they  rather  detract  from  the 
universality,  so  to  speak,  which  is  the  attribute  of  a 


158  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

great  drama.      Shakespeare's  finest  plays   are  inde- 
pendent of  and  disregard  such  accessories. 

Nevertheless  the  portrait  painting,  under  these 
inevitable  limitations,  is  very  well  done,  and  it 
illuminates  an  eventful  period.  The  priests,  states- 
men, and  martyrs  of  Mary's  short  and  troubled  reign 
stand  out  in  clear  relief ;  the  strong  light  thrown  upon 
their  figures  discloses  the  intrigues  and  clashing  politics 
of  a  time  when  the  balance  seemed  to  hang  even  be- 
tween the  old  faith  and  the  new,  just  when  the  Spanish 
marriage  was  adding  a  heavy  weight  to  the  side  of 
Rome.  Paget,  Howard,  Wyatt,  and  Bagenhall  re- 
present the  Englishman  of  that  day  for  whom  religion 
was  a  question  of  politics.  Pole,  Bonner,  and  Gardiner 
are  the  ecclesiastics  for  whom  political  power  was  an 
instrument  for  the  enforcement  of  religious  conformity. 
Mary  and  Elizabeth  are  the  royal  impersonations  of 
the  two  parties,  both  princesses  of  the  Tudor  blood, 
with  the  inherited  courage  that  rises  to  emergencies; 
but  Mary  has  the  foreign  strain  of  bigotry,  while 
Elizabeth,  a  full  Englishwoman,  has  an  instinctive 
understanding  of  and  fellow-feeling  with  the  real 
temper  of  her  countrymen.  On  the  whole  Tennyson 
does  Mary  more  than  justice ;  for  he  uses  the  licence 
of  a  dramatist  to  endow  her  with  much  more  energy 
of  speech  and  action  than  she  can  really  have  possessed, 
and  to  impart  a  fierce  glow  to  her  gloomy  fanaticism. 

Mary  : 

0  God !  I  have  been  too  slack,  too  slack  ; 
There  are  Hot  Gospellers  even  among  our  guards- 
Nobles  we  dared  not  touch.     We  have  but  burnt 
The  heretic  priest,  workmen,  and  women  and  children. 
Wet,  famine,  ague,  fever,  storm,  wreck,  wrath, — 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  159 

We  have  so  play'd  the  coward  ;  but  by  God's  grace, 
We  '11  follow  Philip's  leading,  and  set  up 
The  Holy  Office  here — garner  the  wheat, 
And  burn  the  tares  with  unquenchable  fire.1 

Cecil's  brief  reflections,  after  conversing  with  Elizabeth, 
mark  the  contrast — 

"  Much  it  is 

To  be  nor  mad,  nor  bigot — have  a  mind — 
Not  let  Priests'  talk,  or  dream  of  worlds  to  be, 
Miscolour  things  about  her — sudden  touches 
For  him,  or  him — sunk  rocks  ;  no  passionate  faith — 
But — if  let  be — balance  and  compromise  ; 
Brave,  wary,  sane  to  the  heart  of  her — a  Tudor 
School'd  by  the  shadow  of  death — a  Boleyn,  too, 
Glancing  across  the  Tudor — not  so  well."  2 

The  passage  is  a  model  of  laconic  expression,  indicating 
rapid  and  concentrated  thought.  In  the  general  diction 
of  this  play  the  absence  of  ornament  is  remarkable; 
the  poet  has  put  a  curb  on  his  fancy,  and  has  stripped 
his  English  for  the  encounter  of  keen  wits  occupied  in 
affairs  of  State;  the  priests,  politicians,  and  soldiers 
waste  no  words.  Yet  we  have  here  and  there  familiar 
touches  of  the  picturesque,  as  in  Wyatt's  reference  to 
his  father — 

Wyatt : 

Courtier  of  many  courts,  he  loved  the  more 

His  own  gray  towers,  plain  life  and  lettered  peace, 

To  read  and  rhyme  in  solitary  fields, 

The  lark  above,  the  nightingale  below, 

And  answer  them  in  song.3 

Also  in  the  rendering  of  that  well-known  story  of 
Wyatt  reconnoitring  the  breach  in  London  Bridge, 

1  Act  v.  Scene  v.  2  Ibid.  *  Act  II.  Scene  i. 


160  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

whereby  he  was  cut  off  from  the  city,  was  forced  to 
march  round  by  Kingston,  and  failed  in  his  enterprise — 

"  Last  night  I  climb'd  into  the  gate-house,  Brett, 
And  scared  the  gray  old  porter  and  his  wife. 
And  then  I  crept  along  the  gloom  and  saw 
They  had  hewn  the  drawbridge  down  into  the  river. 
It  roll'd  as  black  as  death  ;  and  that  same  tide 
Which,  coming  with  our  coming,  seem'd  to  smile 
And  sparkle  like  our  fortune  as  thou  saidst, 
Ban  sunless  down,  and  moaned  against  the  piers,"1 

The  play  of  "Harold,"  which  followed  next  in  the 
"historical  trilogy,2"  takes  us  back  to  a  period  when 
history  is  still  blended  with  romance;  so  that  the 
dramatist  could  let  loose  the  reins  of  his  imagination, 
and  could  fashion  his  characters  at  pleasure  within  the 
broad  outlines  of  tradition.  He  has  thus  escaped  from 
the  bonds  of  exactitude ;  he  can  be  more  poetic ;  he  can 
even  avail  himself  of  the  privilege,  which  is  legitimate 
when  used  moderately,  of  giving  a  turn  of  modern 
sentiment  to  the  language  of  personages  belonging  to 
a  distant  century.  Yet  Tennyson  has  nowhere  in  this 
play  done  violence  to  historic  probabilities  in  his  de- 
lineation of  character  and  situation ;  he  takes  the  main 
incidents,  such  as  the  detention  of  Harold  in  Normandy 
until  he  had  solemnly  sworn  to  acknowledge  and  assist 
William's  claim  to  the  English  crown,  the  death  of 
Edward  the  Confessor,  the  battles  of  Stamford  Bridge 
and  Senlac,  and  composes  them  into  dramatic  scenes  as 
an  artist  might  paint  pictures  of  them.  The  dialogue 
between  Harold  and  his  brother  Wulfnoth,  when  both 
are  prisoners  of  the  Norman  at  Bayeux,  and  when 

1  Act  ii.  Scene  iii. 

2  Mary,  Harold,  Becket.    Memoir,  vol.  ii.  p.  173. 


VI.]  THE  PLAYS  161 

Wulfnoth  is  imploring  Harold  to  obtain  their  liberty 
by  swearing  fealty  to  William,  has  striking  and  finely 
versified  passages ;  the  pressure  of  conflicting  feelings 
is  well  rendered.  Will  Harold  yield  and  set  them  free 
for  the  sake  of  Edith  whom  he  loves  1  He  is  touched 
deeply.  Or  for  the  sake  of  England  ? 

Harold :  Deeper  still. 

Wulfnoth : 

And  deeper  still  the  deep-down  oubliette, 
Down  thirty  feet  below  the  smiling  day — 
In  blackness — dogs'  food  thrown  upon  thy  head. 
And  over  thee  the  suns  arise  and  set, 
And  the  lark  sings,  the  sweet  stars  come  and  go, 
And  men  are  at  their  markets,  in  their  fields, 
And  woo  their  loves  and  have  forgotten  thee  ; 
And  thou  art  upright  in  thy  living  grave, 
Where  there  is  barely  room  to  shift  thy  side.1 

In  this  passage,  as  generally  throughout  the  play,  the 
metrical  execution  is  superior  to  that  of  Queen  Mary. 
The  whole  piece,  indeed,  is  written  on  a  higher  poetic 
level ;  the  language  of  the  dialogues  and  speeches  has 
a  certain  grandeur  that  was  inadmissible  in  the  mouths 
of  the  sixteenth-century  notables,  who  were  obliged  to 
speak  by  the  book ;  and  the  portrait  of  a  noble  warrior 
and  patriot  king  is  romantically  enlarged  out  of  the 
dim  records  of  an  unlettered  age.  In  the  final  Act  we 
have  Harold  going  forth  to  the  battle,  the  meeting  of 
the  armies,  and  Edith  with  the  Saxon  bishop  watching 
the  sway  of  a  well-matched  contest,  until  Harold  falls : 
the  intense  excitement  of  the  situation  is  powerfully 
suggested.  The  visions  that  pass  through  Harold's 
dream  as  he  sleeps  in  his  tent  on  the  night  before 

1  Act  n.  Scene  ii. 
L 


162  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Senlac,  have  an  obvious  precedent  in  Shakespeare's 
Richard  in. ;  nor  is  the  chant  of  the  monks  during 
the  fight  quite  an  original  dramatic  invention,  yet  they 
are  both  skilfully  adapted  to  enhance  the  impression  of 
the  crisis.  But  the  concluding  speech  of  "William  the 
Conqueror  over  the  bodies  of  Harold  and  his  mistress, 
Edith,  is  somewhat  marred  by  the  introduction  of  a 
moral  sentiment  that  sounds  too  much  out  of  character 
with  the  time — 

William  :  Leave  them.    Let  them  be  ! 

Bury  him  and  his  paramour  together. 
He  that  was  false  in  oath  to  me,  it  seems 
Was  false  to  his  own  wife.     We  will  not  give  him 
A  Christian  burial 

And  possibly  Tennyson  did  not  at  the  moment  recollect 
that  William's  mother  had  been  just  such  another 
paramour  as  Edith. 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  the  Trilogy  takes 
no  account  of  chronological  order.  If,  at  any  rate, 
the  play  of  Becket,  which  appeared  last  in  the  series, 
being  published  in  1884,  had  preceded  Queen  Mary, 
we  should  have  seen  the  first  beginning,  under 
the  Plantagenets,  of  the  quarrel  between  Rome  and 
the  English  State  which  came  to  a  final  breach 
under  the  Tudors.  The  Memoir  inserts  a  declaration 
of  the  late  Mr.  J.  R.  Green,  no  light  authority,  that 
all  his  researches  into  the  annals  of  the  twelfth 
century  had  not  given  him  so  vivid  a  conception 
of  the  character  of  Henry  n.  and  his  Court  as  was 
embodied  in  Tennyson's  Becket.  Whether  this  is 
a  superior  quality  in  historic  plays,  may  be  open  to 
argument;  and  at  any  rate  one  may  demur  respect- 
fully to  the  rule  laid  down  in  a  letter  written  on  this 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  163 

play  to  its  author  by  Mr.  Bryce,  that  "truth in  history 
is  naturally  truth  in  poetry." *  For  accuracy  of  repro- 
duction, though  it  gratifies  the  realistic  demands  of  the 
present  time,  and  gives  pleasure  to  the  cultivated  reader, 
must  have  a  tendency  to  cramp  the  imaginative  free- 
dom that  wings  the  flight  of  dramatic  genius;  and 
some  historical  plays  and  romances  of  the  first  order 
abound  with  inaccuracies.  Nevertheless  the  rule  may 
be  applicable  to  delineation  of  character;  and  in  his 
two  principal  personages,  Henry  II.  and  Becket,  Tenny- 
son has  embroidered  upon  the  historic  canvas  with 
force  and  fidelity.  The  subject  lends  itself  to  dramatic 
composition  by  providing  for  the  leading  personage  an 
ecclesiastical  hero,  the  Archbishop,  who  overtops  all 
the  others,  marking  the  central  line  of  interest  through- 
out; and  whose  violent  death  in  the  cause  that  he 
impersonates  supplies  a  fitly  tragic  ending  to  the  play. 
Then,  also,  the  story  of  Rosamond  and  Eleanor  provides 
just  the  romantic  element  of  secret  love  and  feminine 
vindictiveness  that  is  needed  to  soften  and  vary  the 
harsh  disputing,  the  interchange  of  threats  and  curses, 
between  priests  and  barons;  and  to  Tennyson's  skill 
in  seizing  and  working  upon  these  points  of  vantage 
we  may  attribute  largely  the  success  of  this  piece 
upon  the  stage.  The  language,  as  in  Queen  Mary,  is 
sonorous  and  masculine,  the  dialogues  are  pointed  in 
thrust  and  parry ;  and  one  or  two  important  speeches 
have  a  stately  tone  well  suited  to  their  occasion. 
Henry  : 

Barons  and  bishops  of  our  realm  of  England, 
After  the  nineteen  winters  of  King  Stephen — 
A  reign  which  was  no  reign,  when  none  could  sit 
By  his  own  hearth  in  peace  ;  when  murder,  common 

1  Memoir. 


164  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

As  nature's  death,  like  Egypt's  plague,  had  filled 
All  things  with  blood,  when  every  doorway  blushed, 
Dashed  red  with  that  unhallowed  passover ; 
When  every  baron  ground  his  blade  in  blood  ; 
The  household  dough  was  kneaded  up  in  blood  ; 
The  mill-wheel  turned  in  blood,  the  wholesome  plow 
Lay  rusting  in  the  furrow's  yellow  weeds, 
Till  famine  dwarft  the  race — I  came,  your  king.1 

In  the  scene  where  Queen  Eleanor  ha3  tracked  Rosa- 
mond through  the  labyrinth  to  her  bower,  threatens  to 
kill  her,  and  offers  life  to  her  on  base  terms,  Rosamond, 
after  kneeling  for  mercy,  at  last  turns  upon  the  Queen 
and  replies  in  the  right  tragic  spirit — 

Rosamond  :  I  am  a  Clifford, 

My  son  a  Clifford  and  Plantagenet, 
I  am  to  die  then.  .  .  . 

Both  of  us  will  die. 

And  I  will  fly  with  my  sweet  boy  to  heaven, 
And  shriek  to  all  the  saints  among  the  stars  : 
Eleanor  of  Aquitaine,  Eleanor  of  England  ! 
Murdered  by  that  adulteress  Eleanor, 
Whose  doings  are  a  horror  to  the  east, 
A  hissing  in  the  west.2 

It  is  a  play  that  won  not  only  the  cordial  commenda- 
tion of  scholars  and  men  of  letters,  but  also  popular 
applause,  and  the  foremost  of  our  English  theatrical 
artists  willingly  joined  in  giving  it  adequate  repre- 
sentation; with  the  result  that  it  held  the  stage 
beyond  fifty  nights,  and  Sir  Henry  Irving  has  said  that 
Becket  is  one  of  the  three  successful  plays  produced 
by  him  at  the  Lyceum.  The  common  remark  that 
Tennyson  was  no  born  dramatist  cannot  be  gainsaid ; 
he  was  essentially  a  lyrical  poet ;  and  the  lyric  vein, 

1  Act  i.  Scene  iii.  2  Act  iv.  Scene  ii. 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  165 

being  different  in  kind  and  charged  with  self-conscious- 
ness, has  to  be  suppressed  or  carefully  controlled  in 
dramatic  composition,  which  must  be  entirely  objective 
and  impersonal.  This  necessity  manifestly  presses 
with  peculiar  weight  upon  the  writer  of  plays  that  are 
intended  to  be  illustrations  of  authentic  history,  where 
the  limits  of  character-probability  have  to  be  observed ; 
for  the  dramatist  could  not  put  fanciful  ideas  of  his 
own  into  the  mouth  of  Philip  of  Spain  or  Cranmer, 
and  must  curtail  his  lyrical  exuberance.  We  may 
therefore  admire  the  versatility  of  Tennyson's  powers 
in  the  restraint  which  he  placed  upon  his  natural 
propensity;  his  plays  are  not  poems  in  his  own 
manner  arranged  dramatically,  like  Mr.  Swinburne's 
Bothwell;  nor  are  they  romances  cut  up  into 
dialogue ;  they  are  severe  and  strenuous  presentations 
of  real  people  and  well-known  events.  This  may 
be  counted  both  as  praise  and  dispraise  ;  for  somehow 
a  drama  that  is  closely  tied  to  facts  lacks  universal 
interest;  it  cannot  rise  far  above  the  ground,  nor 
attain  the  heights  that  secure  for  it  a  permanent 
place  in  the  national  literature.  Yet  if  Tennyson 
has  not  succeeded  in  the  arduous  and  probably 
hopeless  enterprise  of  reviving  the  historical  drama, 
he  deserves  credit  and  sympathy  for  attempting  it; 
and  he  has  set  an  example,  which  is  being  followed 
in  the  romantic  drama  by  a  younger  poet  of  his 
school  in  the  present1  day,  of  endeavouring  to  stem 
the  downward  current  of  deterioration  in  the  taste  of 
the  playgoing  public,  by  offering  them  plays  of  fine 
artistic  quality  and  form,  dealing  seriously  with 
momentous  events  and  deep  emotions,  at  a  time 
1  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips. 


166  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

when  the  national  theatre  is  more  and  more  reduced 
to  ringing  changes  upon  the  trivial  and  commonplace 
situations  of  ordinary  society. 

The  Promise  of  May  takes  very  different  ground. 
It  was  written  somewhat  unwillingly  (we  are  told  in 
the  Memoir)  "  at  the  importunate  entreaty  of  a  friend 
who  had  urged  Tennyson  to  try  his  hand  on  a  modern 
village  tragedy."  This  is  a  pastoral  play,  on  a  well- 
worn  theme — the  ruin  of  a  farmer's  pretty  daughter, 
who  has  been  captivated  by  the  superior  manners  and 
pretentious  talk  of  a  young  man  belonging  to  the 
class  of  gentlefolk.  When  he  appears  on  the  stage 
with  a  book  in  his  hand,  we  know  from  his  first  words 
what  is  coming ;  we  can  see  that  Tennyson  is  fetching 
another  blow  at  the  idol  of  materialism — 

(Enter  Edgar,  reading) : 

This  author,  with  his  charm  of  simple  style 

And  close  dialectic,  all  but  proving  man 

An  automatic  series  of  sensations, 

Has  often  numbed  me  into  apathy 

Against  the  unpleasant  jolts  of  this  rough  road, 

That  breaks  off  short  into  the  abysses — made  me 

A  quietist,  taking  all  things  easily. 

The  conviction,  which  throughout  haunted  Tennyson, 
that  in  default  of  a  clear  and  certain  prospect  of 
immortality  a  man's  soul  may  be  lost  utterly,  that 
he  must  sink  into  sensuality,  and  cannot  indeed  be 
much  blamed  for  it  logically,  is  the  moral  exemplified 
in  this  play.  It  comes  out  in  Edgar's  excuse  for 
seducing  and  deserting  the  girl — 

Edgar  :  What  can  a  man  then  live  for  but  sensations, 
Pleasant  ones  ?    Men  of  old  could  undergo 
Unpleasant  for  the  sake  of  pleasant  ones 
Hereafter,  like  the  Moslem  beauties  waiting 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  167 

To  clasp  their  lovers  by  the  golden  gates. 
For  me,  whose  cheerless  Houris  after  death 
Are  Night  and  Silence,  pleasant  ones — the  while, 
If  possible,  here,  to  crop  the  flower  and  pass. 
Farmer  Dobson:  Well,  I  never  'eard  the  likes  of  that  afoor. 

Nor  has  any  one  else,  in  a  London  theatre.  We  have 
here  the  recurrent  idea  that  scientific  knowledge  saps 
and  destroys  the  basis  of  morality,  and  lets  loose  all 
the  unruly  affections  of  sinful  men.  Marriage  is  to 
Edgar  an  obsolete  tradition — 

Edgar  :  When  the  man, 

The  child  of  evolution,  flings  aside 
His  swaddling  bands,  the  morals  of  his  tribe, 
He,  following  his  own  instincts  as  his  God, 
Will  enter  on  the  larger  golden  age  ; 
No  pleasure  there  tabooed. 

This  is  scarcely  a  persuasive  way  of  wooing  a  simple 
sweetheart,  and  Eva,  the  farmer's  daughter,  is  natur- 
ally puzzled,  while  Dobson,  Edgar's  rival,  is  mortally 
suspicious  of  him ;  and  at  the  end  the  materialist  turns 
out  a  double-dyed  villain,  who  gets  off  much  too 
cheaply.  The  didactic  strain  is  evidently  out  of 
place  in  a  pastoral,  save  for  the  occasionally  comic 
effect  of  an  evolutionist  discoursing  among  bamboozled 
farmers  and  ploughmen  —  an  incongruous  figure, 
brought  in  to  be  battered.  And  the  thread  that 
holds  together  the  action  and  the  personages  is  too 
slight.  But  the  rural  scenery  and  the  talk  of  the 
peasantry  bring  out  Tennyson's  genuine  knowledge 
of  country  life,  and  this  part  of  the  dialogues  is,  as 
in  all  Tennyson's  plays,  alert  and  amusing.  On  its 
first  night  the  piece  was  received  in  a  contentious 
spirit  by  the  audience  at  The  Globe,  chiefly,  as  the 


168  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Memoir  mentions,  because  it  had  been  advertised  as  an 
attack  against  Socialism ;  "  the  public  had  mistaken  its 
purpose."  Yet  although  an  experienced  playwright 
declared  at  the  time  that  he  could  have  made  it  a 
signal  success,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  travesty 
of  moral  philosophy  (and,  to  be  theatrically  popular, 
it  must  be  travestied)  could  ever  have  helped  to  sus- 
tain Tennyson's  reputation  as  a  dramatic  author. 

The  other  minor  plays  of  Tennyson  are  of  a  different 
and  brighter  cast.  In  December  1879  The  Falcon 
was  produced  at  the  St.  James's  theatre,  and  held  the 
stage  sixty-seven  nights;  it  is  a  mediaeval  love-story 
belonging  to  the  class  of  ingenious  fabliaux,  told  in 
the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio,  afterwards  used  by  La 
Fontaine,  and  lastly  arranged  by  Tennyson  as  a 
metrical  drama  in  one  scene.  Fanny  Kemble  likened 
it  to  one  of  A.  de  Musset's  light  pieces,  though  it  has 
not  his  sparkling  wit.  A  lady  makes  a  sudden  visit 
to  the  knight  who  has  been  vainly  wooing  her.  He 
must  offer  her  some  refreshment,  so  he  is  forced  to  kill 
his  favourite  falcon  to  provide  a  solitary  dish;  but 
she  had  come  to  demand  of  him  for  her  son  this  very 
bird;  and  he  has  to  confess  that  she  has  eaten1  it. 
Such  a  sacrifice  to  love  so  touches  the  lady's  heart 
that  she  marries  him.  The  Cup,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  in  a  graver  vein,  expanded  from  a  story  by  Plutarch 
of  a  Galatian  lady  in  the  time  of  the  Koman  republic, 
who  escapes  a  forced  marriage  by  poisoning  herself 
and  a  Galatian  noble,  Synorix,  the  traitor  to  his 
country,  who  had  joined  the  conquering  Romans  and 

1  Helas,  reprit  1'amant  infortund, 
L'Oiseau  n'est  plus,  vous  en  avez  din£. 

(La  Fontaine.) 


VI.]  THE  PLAYS  169 

had  murdered  her  husband.  The  political  situation  of 
a  province  just  subdued  by  the  Republic  forms  a  good 
background  to  the  action  and  gives  it  verisimilitude, 
for  the  story  rings  true  as  an  incident  that  might  well 
have  happened  in  the  circumstances.  The  characters 
are  lightly  yet  distinctly  set,  with  the  strong  emotions 
poetically  expressed ;  and  when  we  learn  that  Irving 
with  the  best  English  actress  took  the  leading  parts, 
with  magnificently  decorative  scenery,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  why  The  Cup  had  the  longest  run  in 
England  of  all  Tennyson's  dramatic  pieces. 

Last  of  all,  The  Foresters  was  brought  out  on  the 
New  York  stage  in  1892,  when  it  received  a  hearty 
welcome  from  the  Americans,  for  whom  this  reminis- 
cence of  early  English  woods  and  wolds  may  have  come 
like  a  breath  of  fresh  air  to  their  crowded  rectangular 
streets.  This  play  has  the  advantage  of  keeping 
well  outside  authentic  history ;  for  though  Tennyson 
wrote  of  it  that  he  had  "sketched  the  state  of  the 
people  in  another  great  transition  period  of  the 
making  of  England,"  he  has  luckily  done  nothing  of 
the  kind,  but  has  given  us  the  famous  figures  of 
popular  tradition,  handed  down  by  the  minstrels  and 
rhymers,  in  a  new  and  lively  dress.  Undoubtedly 
these  legends  reflect  the  feelings  and  sympathies  of  the 
English  people  at  a  time  when  the  great  midland 
forests  sheltered  bands  of  daring  men,  who  defied  the 
Norman  law  and  kept  up  a  sort  of  guerilla  against  the 
foreign  yoke;  and  this  is  an  atmosphere  much  more 
favourable  to  a  romantic  woodland  drama  than  the 
climate  of  history.  The  introduction  of  Titania  with  her 
fairies  (suggested,  probably  for  scenic  effect,  by  Irving) 
is  a  somewhat  temerarious  device,  not  only  for  the 


170  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  n. 

obvious  reason  that  they  have  been  created  once  for 
all  by  a  master-hand,  but  also  because  the  pure  magical 
touch  was  not  in  Tennyson ;  nor  was  his  verse  light 
enough  for  fantastic  spriteliness,  or  his  playfulness 
sufficiently  volatile. 

Titania  :  I,  Titania,  bid  you  flit, 

And  you  dare  to  call  me  Tit. 
First  Fairy  :  Tit  for  love  of  brevity, 
Not  for  love  of  levity. 
Titania  :  Pertest  of  our  flickering  mob 

Wouldst  thou  call  my  Oberon  Ob  ? 

Moreover,  Thomas  Love  Peacock's  Maid  Marian,  with 
its  exquisite  snatches  of  song  and  ballad,  and  the 
richer  humour  of  its  dialogue,  had  already  traversed 
the  same  ground  in  prose.  But  at  the  end  of  The 
Foresters  Tennyson's  special  qualities  of  picturesque 
suggestion  and  reverie  come  out  in  the  dreamy 
melodious  lines  that  drop  the  curtain  on  a  vision 
of  primitive  romance. 

Marian  :  And  yet  I  think  these  oaks  at  dawn  and  even 
Will  whisper  evermore  of  Kobin  Hood  ; 
We  leave  but  happy  memories  in  the  forest. 

You,  good  friar, 

You  Much,  you  Scarlet,  you  dear  Little  John, 
Your  names  will  cling  like  ivy  to  the  wood. 
And  here,  perhaps,  a  hundred  years  away, 
Some  hunter  in  day  dreams  or  half  asleep 
Will  hear  our  arrows  whizzing  overhead, 
And  catch  the  winding  of  a  phantom  horn. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE  LAST  YEARS   AND   LATEST  POETRY:    CONCLUSION 

IN  1883  a  peerage  was  offered  by  the  Queen  to 
Tennyson,  who  after  some  hesitation  consented,  under 
Gladstone's  advice,  to  accept  it.  He  took  his  seat,  the 
first  representative  in  the  House  of  Lords  of  a  purely 
literary  qualification,  in  1884 ;  and  in  the  same  year  he 
voted  for  the  Franchise  Bill,  having  stipulated  with 
Gladstone  and  obtained  a  pledge  that  a  Bill  for  the 
redistribution  of  constituencies  should  follow.  The 
measure  he  held  to  be  just  and  necessary,  though 
Gladstone  received  from  him  a  verse  of  warning 
against  setting  the  troubled  waters  of  politics  toward 
a  precipitate  channel.  Their  views  upon  public  affairs 
soon  afterward  fell  more  and  more  asunder ;  and  we 
find  Tennyson  writing  that  he  loved  Gladstone,  but 
hated  hi?  Irish  policy ;  while  the  poet's  natural  dis- 
trust of  'rash  innovators'  shows  itself  repeatedly  in 
all  his  discourse  upon  the  constitutional  questions  of 
this  time. 

The  years  of  his  declining  life  were  passed  between 
his  two  country  houses,  with  excursions  into  the 
country,  visits  to  London,  and  occasional  cruises  in  a 
friend's  yacht.  He  received  old  friends  and  privileged 
guests  with  kindly  hospitality ;  talked  on  politics, 
religion,  and  poetry;  spoke  of  men  whom  he  had 


172  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

known,  scenes  that  he  remembered,  and  books  that  he 
had  read ;  received  letters  out  of  all  lands,  and  replied 
to  some  of  them  with  epigrammatic  brevity.  He  was 
still  occupied  with  the  leisurely  composition  of  his 
later  poems. 

From  1885  Tennyson  had  published,  at  intervals, 
three  small  volumes  of  poems,  beside  Locksley  Hall, 
Sixty  Years  Afterward.  One  line  in  this  poem  its 
author  held  to  be  the  best  of  the  kind  that  he  had 
ever  written — 

"  Universal  Ocean  softly  washing  all  her  warless  isles," 

though  it  is  full  of  the  sibilants  that  vex  all  English 
verse-makers ;  and  the  suggestion  that  the  sea  would 
become  calm  when  the  land  should  be  at  peace  may  be 
thought  logically  perplexing.  It  was  but  seasonable 
that  Tennyson's  latest  poetry  should  have  been  tinged 
with  autumnal  hues.  The  range  of  his  mind  had  been 
widened  by  constant  assimilation  with  the  expansion 
of  scientific  knowledge,  and  by  long  experience  of  the 
world  j  but  as  far  horizons  often  produce  a  vague 
sadness,  so  his  retrospective  views  of  life,  as  he  turns 
back  and  surveys  it,  are  melancholy.  In  poetry  and 
in  prose  the  sequel  to  a  fine  original  piece,  written 
after  a  long  interval,  has  very  rarely,  if  ever,  been 
successful ;  though  the  second  part  is  often  valuable  to 
the  biographer  by  illustrating  the  alterations  of  style 
and  thought  that  follow  naturally  the  course  of  years. 
Tennyson  himself  said  that  "the  two  Locksley  Halls 
were  likely  to  be  in  the  future  two  of  the  most 
historically  interesting  of  his  poems,  as  descriptive  of 
the  tone  of  the  age  at  two  distant  periods  of  his  life." 
But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  interest  is  not 


vn.]         LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  173 

rather  biographical  than  historical,  whether,  in  fact, 
the  change  of  tone  was  not  in  the  age,  but  in 
Tennyson  himself.  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  interval  of  sixty  years,  over  which  the  aged  squire 
in  the  second  poem  looks  back  so  mournfully,  was  for 
the  English  people  a  period  of  active  and  eager  enter- 
prise, of  social  betterment  and  national  prosperity. 
The  grave  forebodings  of  the  poem,  the  sense  of  dismay 
at  the  ills  of  mortality,  reflect  the  mood  of  the  poet, 
not  of  the  people.  He  would  probably  have  replied 
that  the  poem  was  a  dramatic  representation  of  old 
age,  and  he  disclaimed  any  identity  with  the  portraits 
of  his  imagination ;  but  it  is  impossible  for  an  author 
to  insist  positively  on  his  entire  personal  detachment 
from  his  poetic  impersonations  of  thought  and  char- 
acter. The  choice  of  subject  and  its  treatment  mark 
unmistakably  the  dominant  ideas;  nor  can  an  essen- 
tially lyrical  poet  give  fervid  expression  to  any  feelings 
but  his  own. 

On  the  whole,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  two  last 
volumes  fall  below  the  level  of  his  verse  at  its  prime; 
nor  could  one  expect  or  desire  that  after  threescore 
years  and  ten  a  poet's  age  should  not  affect  the  force 
and  fertility  of  his  writing  and  his  general  outlook  on 
life.  Some  of  these  late  poems  are  overweighted  with 
thought,  the  diction  is  too  emphatic,  the  colour  of  his 
meditations  takes  a  more  sombre  tinge  than  hereto- 
fore, and  a  certain  cloudiness  gathers  over  his  loftier 
utterances.  Yet  in  Demeter  and  Persephone  we  have 
still  the  delicate  handling,  the  self-restraint,  the  severe 
air  of  his  earlier  compositions.  The  ancient  allegory 
of  the  Earth  goddess,  the  figure  of  Nature  in  flower 
and  in  decay,  of  the  disappearance  and  return  of  the 


174  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

harvest,  is  finely  enlarged  into  the  moral  conception  of 
light  eventually  conquering  darkness,  of  Heaven  finally 
prevailing  over  the  sunless  halls  of  Hades.  The  lines 
subjoined  are  full  of  his  old  picturesque  charm — 

"  Once  more  the  reaper  in  the  gleam  of  dawn 
Will  see  me  by  the  landmark  far  away 
Blessing  his  field,  or  seated  in  the  dusk 
Of  even,  by  the  lonely  threshing-floor, 
Eejoicing  in  the  Harvest  and  the  grange." 

And  one  well-known  passage  seems  to  connect,  by  a 
simile,  Demeter's  vision  of  her  daughter  with  telepathic 
intimations — one  of  those  obscure  psychical  pheno- 
mena which  have  recently  come1  within  the  scope  of 
scientific  research — 

"  Last,  as  the  likeness  of  a  dying  man, 
Without  his  knowledge,  flits  from  him  to  warn 
A  far-off  friendship  that  he  comes  no  more." 

The  passing  of  such  shadows  over  the  brain  is  well 
known  to  be  an  old  and  perplexing  experience ;  and 
Crabbe,  who  collected  the  legends  of  the  seashore, 
alludes  to  such  a  visitation  in  one  of  his  Tales. 

Of  Tiresias  some  mention  has  already  been  made. 
Possibly  the  miscellaneous  character  of  these  pieces 
may  be  thought  to  do  some  damage  to  their  collective 
impressiveness,  by  suggesting  that  stray  leaves  may 
have  been  collected  and  appended  to  the  principal 
poem  in  each  volume.  "Owd  Roa,"  a  story  of  a  dog, 
told  in  Lincolnshire  dialect  that  cannot  be  understood 
without  a  glossary,  becomes  wearisome  in  more  than 
sixty  stanzas ;  the  more  so  because,  being  placed  in  the 
latest  complete  edition  between  Demeter  and  Vastness, 


vii.]         LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  175 

it  finds  the  reader  unprepared  for  such  abrupt  alterna- 
tions of  style  and  subject.  No  one,  as  has  been  said, 
would  count  it  unnatural  or  unbecoming  that  in  many 
of  these  poems  the  shade  which  perpetually  hung 
over  Tennyson's  brooding  mind  should  have  become 
darker  in  the  late  evening  of  his  days.  His  sympathy 
with  human  unhappiness  repeatedly  shows  itself  in 
such  pieces  as  Forlorn,  The  Leper's  Bride,  Romney's 
Remorse,  The  Ring,  The  Bandit's  Death, — all  of  w,hich 
exhibit  the  sorrowful  sides  of  life,  and  illustrate 
patience  in  suffering,  repentance,  or,  in  one  instance, 
revenge.  In  the  poem  of  Forlorn,  where  a  mother 
adjures  her  daughter  not  to  marry  without  confess- 
ing to  her  lover  a  long-past  frailty,  the  tone  is  too 
vehement;  and  the  same  subject  has  been  more 
emotionally  handled  in  one  of  George  Meredith's 
earliest  poems,  Margaret's  Bridal  Eve  ;  where  the 
mother  disregards  moral  scruples,  and  takes  the  more 
natural  part  of  urging  the  girl  to  conceal  her  fault; 
but  she  confesses,  is  renounced  by  the  lover,  and  dies. 
Of  the  two  versions  one  must  prefer  that  of  Meredith, 
who  strikes  a  superior  keynote,  and  creates  the  right 
tragic  situation  by  throwing  the  strain  of  conscience  and 
the  merit  of  self-sacrifice  entirely  upon  the  daughter. 

The  same  gloominess  of  atmosphere  overhangs  The 
Death  of  OEnone.  The  beautiful  mountain-nymph  of 
Tennyson's  youth,  passionately  lamenting  her  desertion 
upon  Mount  Ida,  has  now  become  soured  and  vindic- 
tive ;  she  is  a  resentful  wife  to  whom  Paris,  dying  from 
the  poisoned  arrow,  crawls  "lame,  crooked,  reeling,  livid, 
through  the  mist,"  imploring  her  to  heal  him.  CEnone 
spurns  him  as  an  adulterer  who  may  "  go  back  to  his 
adulteress  and  die";  yet  at  his  death  she  throws  her- 


176  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

self  into  the  flames  of  his  pyre.  Tennyson  said  that 
he  considered  this  poem  even  more  strictly  classical  in 
form  and  language  than  the  old  (Enone.  To  some  of 
us,  nevertheless,  it  may  seem  that  its  tone  of  stern 
reprobation  jars  with  the  style  and  feeling  of  antique 
Hellenic  tradition.  The  story  is  taken  from  a  short 
passage  in  a  late  Greek  writer ; 1  and  we  may  remem- 
ber that  in  Homer  the  adulteress  Helen  is  found  living 
happily  and  honourably  after  the  war  with  her  hus- 
band in  Sparta.  And  Tennyson's  propensity  to  en- 
force grave  moral  lessons  has  led  him  to  lay  the  lash 
so  heavily  on  Paris  as  to  disparage  (Enone  and  provoke 
compassion  for  the  sinner. 

The  spirituality  of  the  East,  whence  all  great  religions 
of  the  world  have  originated,  had  a  strong  attraction 
for  his  meditative  temperament ;  but  he  never  threw 
its  deeper  philosophy  into  concrete  form,  though  he 
sketched  the  beginning  of  a  poem  upon  Ormuzd  and 
Ahriman,  the  Manichaean  spirits  of  good  and  evil. 
Akbar's  Dream,  the  single  study  made  by  Tennyson  of 
an  authentic  Asiatic  figure,  does  indeed  embody  the 
lofty  ideal  of  an  eclectic  Faith  transcending  formalism, 
sectarian  intolerance,  and  the  idols  of  the  crowd,  and 
seeking  for  some  spacious  theology  that  shall  compre- 
hend the  inner  significance  and  aspirations  of  all  external 
worships.  Akbar,  however,  was  not,  could  not  be,  a 
great  spiritual  leader  of  men ;  he  was  a  large-minded 
politic  emperor  ruling  over  manifold  races  and  conflict- 
ing creeds;  and  he  himself  foresaw  that  his  eclectic 
system  could  not  take  root  or  endure.  This  general 
conception  of  his  character  and  position  is  drawn  in 
grand  outline,  though  the  subject  is  too  large  for  so 
1  Apollodorus. 


vii.]          LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  177 

short  a  poem ;  and  the  concluding  Hymn  to  the  Sun  is 
a  majestic  song  of  praise — 

"Adoring  Him  the  Timeless  in  the  flame  that  measures  Time." 

The  last  poem  that  Tennyson  finished  was  The 
Dreamer,  who  hears  in  his  sleep  the  wail  of  the  Earth 
rolling  through  space,  the  mournful  music  of  a  sphere 
oppressed  by  the  burden  of  the  sins  and  misfortunes 
of  the  race  whom  it  is  bearing  along,  helpless  and  un- 
willing, to  an  uncertain  destiny.  The  poet  endeavours 
to  cheer  our  disconsolate  planet  by  the  assurance  that 

"  All's  well  that  ends  well, 

Whirl  and  follow  the  Sun," 

which  may  be  understood  allegorically  as  of  hope  in 
the  Light  that  leads. 

The  Death  of  (Enone  and  Akbar's  Dream,  with  other 
minor  pieces,  are  in  the  volume  which  closed,  in  1892, 
the  long  series  of  poems  that  had  held  two  generations 
under  their  charm.  Throughout  that  period,  almost 
equal  in  length  to  Queen  Victoria's  reign,  Tennyson 
maintained  his  foremost  place  among  the  Victorian 
poets ;  and  although  one  can  mark  the  slow  decline  of 
a  genius  that  had  reached  its  zenith  fifty  years  before 
death  extinguished  it,  yet  hardly  any  English  poet 
has  so  long  retained  power,  or  has  published  so  little 
that  might  have  been  omitted  with  benefit  to  his 
permanent  reputation.  Nor  will  it  ever  be  for- 
gotten that  in  his  eighty-first  year  he  wrote  Crossing 
the  Bar,  where  the  noiseless  indraw  of  the  ebb-tide 
from  the  land  back  into  the  ocean  is  a  magnificent 
image  of  the  soul's  quiet  parting  from  life  on  earth  and 
its  absorption  into  the  vastness  of  infinity. 

M 


178  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

It  is  apparent  from  the  Memoir,  at  any  rate,  that 
the  weight  of  more  than  fourscore  years  depressed  none 
of  Tennyson's  interest  in  literature  and  art,  in  political 
and  philosophic  questions ;  nor  did  it  slacken  his  enjoy- 
ment of  humorous  observation  or  anecdote.  Among 
many  recollections  he  told  of  Hallam  (the  historian) 
saying  to  him,  "  I  have  lived  to  read  Carlyle's  French 
Revolution,  but  I  cannot  get  on  with  it,  the  style  is  so 
abominable";  and  of  Carlyle  groaning  over  Hallam's 
Constitutional  History,  "  Eh,  it 's  a  miserable  skeleton  of 
a  book  " — which  brings  out  into  summary  comparison 
two  opposite  schools  of  history-writing,  the  picturesque 
and  the  precise.  He  praised  Carlyle's  honesty,  but 
said  that  he  knew  nothing  about  poetry  or  art.  He 
told  how  the  sage  of  Chelsea  once  came  to  smoke 
a  pipe  with  him  one  evening  in  London,  when  the 
talk  turned  upon  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and 
Carlyle  said,  "Eh,  old  Jewish  rags,  you  must  clear 
your  mind  of  all  that,"  and  likened  man's  sojourn 
on  earth  to  a  traveller's  rest  at  an  inn;  whereupon 
Tennyson  rejoined  that  the  traveller  knew  whither  he 
was  bound,  and  where  he  should  sleep  on  the  night 
following.  Fitzgerald,  who  was  present,  might  have 
quoted  to  them  his  own  stanza  from  Omar  Khayyam, 
which  gives  the  true  inner  meaning  of  the  famous 
parable  of  the  dervish  who  insisted  on  taking  up  his 
quarters  in  the  king's  palace,  which  he  declared  to  be 
nothing  more  than  a  caravanserai.1 

Eobert   Browning's   death  in  December  1889   dis- 

1  "  'Tisbut  a  tent  where  takes  his  one  day's  rest 
A  Sultan  to  the  realm  of  Death  addrest ; 
The  Sultan  rises,  and  the  dark  Ferrash 
Strikes,  and  prepares  it  for  another  guest." 


vii.]          LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  179 

tressed  him  acutely ;  it  was  a  forewarning  to  the  elder 
of  two  brothers  in  verse  for  whom  posterity  must 
decide  whether  they  are  to  be  equals  in  renown.  "  A 
great  thinker  in  verse,"  Tennyson  said  of  him;  and 
again,  "He  has  plenty  of  music  in  him,  but  cannot 
get  it  out ;  he  has  intellect  enough  for  a  dozen  of  us, 
but  he  has  not  got  the  glory  of  words."  Their  dis- 
tinctive styles  and  qualities  are  so  well  marked  that 
each  poet  sets  the  other  in  relief ;  and  the  generation 
that  had  two  such  interpreters  is  singularly  fortunate. 
In  the  junior  poets  of  his  later  day  he  took  a  sympathetic 
interest.  He  wrote  kindly  to  Eudyard  Kipling,  whose 
patriotic  verse  pleased  him,  and  to  William  Watson, 
who  twelve  months  later  paid  a  grateful  tribute  to  his 
memory  in  one  of  the  best  among  many  threnodies. 

His  last  residence  at  Farringford  was  in  the  spring 
and  early  summer  of  1892,  when  he  made  a  yachting 
voyage  to  the  Channel  Islands ;  and  by  the  autumn  he 
was  at  Aid  worth  in  Surrey.  Lord  Selborne  and  the 
Master  of  Balliol  visited  him,  but  he  told  Jowett  that 
he  was  not  strong  enough  for  the  usual  discussions 
between  them  on  religion  and  philosophy.  Jowett 
answered,  "  Your  poetry  has  an  element  of  philosophy 
more  to  be  considered  than  any  regular  philosophy  in 
England,"  which  might  be  interpreted  as  an  ambiguous 
and  possibly  not  an  extravagant  compliment. 

The  final  chapter  of  the  Memoir  gives  briefly  some 
of  his  latest  sayings,  and  describes  a  peaceful  and 
noble  ending.  He  found  his  Christianity  undisturbed 
by  contentious  sects  and  creeds,  but,  he  said,  "  I  dread 
the  losing  of  forms;  I  have  expressed  this  in  my 
Akbar."  When,  at  the  end  of  September  1892,  he 
fell  seriously  ill,  and  Sir  Andrew  Clarke  arrived,  the 


180  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

physician  and  his  patient  fell  to  discussing  Gray's 
Elegy ;  and  a  few  days  later,  although  he  had  become 
much  worse,  he  sent  for  his  Shakespeare,  but  he  was 
obliged  to  let  his  son  read  to  him.  Next  day  he  said, 
"I  want  the  blinds  up;  I  want  to  see  the  sky  and 
the  light."  It  was  a  glorious  morning,  and  the  warm 
sunshine  was  flooding  the  Sussex  weald  and  the  line 
of  the  South  Downs,  which  he  could  see  from  his 
window.  He  lay  with  his  hand  resting  on  his  Shake- 
speare, unable  to  read ;  and  after  midnight  on  the  6th 
October  he  passed  away  very  quietly.  The  funeral 
service  in  Westminster  Abbey,  with  its  two  anthems 
— Crossing  the  Bar  and  The  Silent  Voices — filling  the 
long-drawn  aisles  and  rising  to  the  fretted  vault  above 
the  heads  of  a  great  congregation,  will  long  be  remem- 
bered by  those  who  were  present.  His  pleasant  and 
prosperous  life  had  been  varied  by  few  griefs  or 
troubles;  he  had  attained  signal  success  in  the  high 
calling  that  he  had  set  before  himself;  he  had  won 
honour  and  fame  among  all  English-speaking  peoples, 
and  he  departed  at  the  coming  of  the  time  when  no 
man  can  work. 

A  comparison  of  Tennyson  with  Browning  has 
already  been  touched  upon.  Browning's  obscurity, 
when  he  was  engaged  upon  his  minute  mental 
anatomy,  his  manner  of  leaving  his  thoughts  rough- 
hewn,  are  points  of  contrast  with  Tennyson's  clear 
and  chiselled  phrasing;  we  have  less  light  as  we  go 
deeper.  The  truth  is  that  Browning's  psychologic 
studies  are  too  diffuse  and  discursive  for  the  compact 
and  vivid  treatment  that  is  essential  to  poetry.  And 
the  peculiarity  of  his  genius — the  strain  and  hard 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  181 

service  that  he  imposed  upon  the  English  tongue — 
place  him  to  some  extent  outside  the  right  apostolic 
succession,  in  its  direct  line,  of  our  national  poets, 
of  those  who  have  enlarged  the  capacity  of  our 
language  for  imaginative  and  musical  expression, 
without  subjecting  the  instrument  to  rough  usage. 
Among  these  Tennyson  may  certainly  be  counted. 
To  lay  stress  upon  the  metrical  variety  of  his  poems, 
upon  his  experiments  in  classical  prosody,  or  upon 
his  development  of  the  resources  of  the  language 
for  harmony,  would  be  to  repeat  what  has  been 
frequently  said  by  others.  It  may  be  questioned 
whether  he  could  give  his  rhythm  the  swift  movement, 
as  of  a  thoroughbred  racer  on  turf,  that  is  produced 
by  Mr.  Swinburne  in  some  of  his  most  elaborate 
compositions,  where  the  accent  and  the  quantity  fall 
together;  nor  had  he  the  resonant  organ-notes  of 
Milton  when  he  was  playing  a  symphony  upon  the 
open  vowels.  Yet  his  power  of  smoothing  down 
linguistic  harshness  and  difficulties  was  remarkable ; 
and  his  skill  in  the  arrangement  of  words  to  connote 
physical  sensations  has  been  already  mentioned.  His 
command  over  the  long,  flowing  line,  which  no  poet 
before  him  had  used  so  frequently,  gave  it  the 
flexibility  that  served  him  well  in  such  pieces  as 
The  Northern  Farmer,  where  the  broad  dialect  required 
free  play;  while  in  other  poems  he  could  give  this 
metre  the  sounding  roll  of  a  chant  or  a  chorus.  On 
the  instrumental  resources  of  blank  verse  we  know 
that  he  set  the  highest  value.  "Blank  verse,"  he  said 
once,  "can  be  the  finest  mode  of  expression  in  our 
language " ;  he  had  his  own  secrets  of  arranging  and 
diversifying  it;  and  all  the  latest  composers  in  this 


182  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

essentially  English  metre  have  profited  by  his  lessons. 
But  for  a  thorough  analysis  of  Tennyson's  management 
of  blank  verse,  in  comparison  with  the  other  masters 
of  the  art,  the  student  must  again  be  referred  to  Mr. 
J.  B.  Mayor's  "  Chapters  on  English  Metre,"  where  the 
styles  of  Tennyson  and  Browning,  as  representatives 
of  modern  English  versification,  are  critically  examined. 
It  will  have  been  seen  that  some  attempt  has  been 
made  in  these  pages  to  combine  a  short  biography  of 
Tennyson  with  a  running  commentary  on  his  poems, 
as  they  illustrate  his  intellectual  habit  and  the  circum- 
stances of  his  life.  And  to  some  extent  the  result 
accords  with  Taine's  generalising  treatment  of  literature 
as  a  bundle  of  documents  that  reveal  and  record  the 
conditions,  social  and  climatic,  moral  and  material,  in 
which  it  was  produced,  and  thus  elucidate  history. 
Yet  in  the  case  of  a  writer  who  is  almost  our  con- 
temporary, this  analytical  method  is  too  easy  to  be 
of  much  importance,  for  there  is  an  obvious  and 
necessary  correspondence  between  his  work  and  his 
world ;  the  man  and  his  milieu  are  both  well  known 
to  us;  the  characteristics  are  those  of  his  class  and 
his  nation ;  we  have  only  to  put  together  causes  and 
effects  that  show  manifestly  the  correlation  between 
the  environment  and  its  product.  Among  the  signs 
of  his  time  may  be  noticed,  in  particular,  the  influence 
on  his  poetry  of  the  scientific  spirit,  the  growth  of 
accurate  habits  of  observation,  the  demand  for  exacti- 
tude in  details,  for  minute  delineation  of  accessories, 
for  a  patient  study  of  small  things  ;  the  spirit,  in  fact, 
which  has  affected  art  and  literature  in  the  form  of 
what  is  now  called  realism.  No  poet  has  been  more 
solicitous  than  Tennyson  about  precision  in  his  land- 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  183 

scape  painting,  or  more  carefully  correct  in  his  allusions 
to  animals  and  plants ;  and  in  most  instances  the  pre- 
cision of  fact  strengthens  the  ornamental  form,  like  a 
solid  building  architecturally  decorated.  Burke,  in 
his  treatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  observes  that 
"there  are  reasons  in  nature  why  the  obscure  idea, 
when  properly  conveyed,  should  be  more  affecting  in 
poetry  than  the  clear " ;  but  in  Tennyson's  verse  the 
exactitude  has  in  no  way  detracted  from  its  beauty. 
And  his  metaphors  are  much  more  than  figures  of 
style ;  they  very  often  do  really  intensify  a  vivid 
sensation.  Yet  the  scientific  impulse  carries  him  too 
far  when  experimental  physics  are  made  to  furnish  a 
metaphor  for  unbearable  emotion — 

"  Break,  thou  deep  vase  of  chilling  tears, 
That  grief  has  shaken  into  frost." 

We  have  to  understand  that  at  a  certain  low  tempera- 
ture water,  if  shaken,  will  expand  into  ice  and  break 
the  vessel  that  contains  it ;  and  so  a  heart  that  is 
benumbed  with  grief  will  be  rent  if  it  is  agitated  by  a 
too  painful  recollection.  We  may  admire  the  technical 
skill  that  has  compressed  all  this  into  two  short  lines ; 
but  the  metaphor  is  too  ingenious,  and  the  effort  of 
seizing  the  analogy  undoubtedly  checks  our  sensibility 
to  the  poet's  distress.  He  is  much  more  in  his  true 
poetical  element  when  he  returns  to  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  mystery  that  no  scientific  research  can 
penetrate  or  unravel,  when  he  plucks  the  flower  in  the 
crannied  wall — 

"  If  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 


184  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"Toute  1'immensite  traverse  1'humble  fleur  du  penseur 
contemplee,"  says  Victor  Hugo;  the  microscope  and 
telescope,  the  vast  prospects  and  retrospects  thrown 
open  to  us  by  Science,  still  leave  the  world  no  less  an 
unintelligible  enigma  than  before.  Between  mythology 
and  science,  between  the  capricious  elemental  divinities 
and  the  conception  of  fixed  mechanical  laws,  we  travel 
from  the  earliest  to  the  latest  stages  of  man's  perpetual 
endeavour  to  decipher  the  secrets  of  nature.  The  myths 
have  always  lent  themselves  to  poetry,  which  indeed 
may  be  said  to  have  created  them ;  and  Tennyson  has 
given  new  form  and  moral  significance  to  some  of  the 
ancient  fables.  But  his  imaginative  faculty  was  also 
applied  to  the  metaphysical  problems  which  lie  beyond 
the  range  of  discovery ;  and  he  has  treated  the  laws  of 
nature  as  the  index  and  intimations  of  the  infinite 
Power  that  moves  somewhere  behind  them.  Whatever 
may  be  said  of  him  as  a  philosopher,  it  may  be  granted 
that  in  this  region  of  ideas  he  has  produced  some 
splendid  poetry,  and  has  illustrated  the  questioning 
spirit  of  his  age.  In  the  latest  poems  his  dismay  at 
the  pettiness  of  man's  part  and  place  in  the  cosmic 
evolution,  at  the  vision  of  a  godless  ocean  sapping 
and  swallowing  up  all  definite  beliefs,  seems  to  have 
gradually  quieted  down  into  the  conviction  that  a 
higher  and  purified  existence  surely  awaits  us.  Such 
short  pieces  as  Doubt  and  Prayer,  Faith,  The  Silent 
Voices,  and  others  in  the  small  volume  of  1892,  are 
passing  Thoughts  versified,  like  the  gnomic  sentences 
in  prose  of  Pascal  or  Joubert.  Their  tone  is  generally 
hopeful  and  devout ;  and  the  Silent  Voices  of  the  dead 
call  him 


VIT.]  CONCLUSION  185 

"  Forward  to  the  starry  track, 
Glimmering  up  the  height  beyond  me, 
On,  and  always  on." 

In  Wordsworth's  famous  Ode  the  celestial  light  is 
behind  us,  and  slowly  fades  into  the  light  of  common 
day— 

"  Whither  has  fled  the  visionary  gleam  ?" 

We  look  back  at  "  the  immortal  sea  which  brought  us 
hither."  In  Tennyson's  poem  of  Merlin  and  the  Gleam 
the  light  is  in  front  of  us  across  the  great  water — 

"  There  on  the  border 
Of  boundless  Ocean, 
And  all  but  in  Heaven 
Hovers  the  Gleam." 

If,  again,  we  descend  from  these  spheres  of  lofty 
speculation,  and  turn  to  the  positive  and  practical 
aspects  of  Tennyson's  poetry,  we  may  allow  that  it 
undoubtedly  represents  the  ideas  and  tastes,  the 
inherited  predilections,  the  prevailing  currents  of 
thought,  of  Englishmen  belonging  to  his  class  and  his 
generation.  Moderation  in  politics,  refined  culture, 
religious  liberalism  chequered  by  doubt,  a  lively 
interest  in  the  advance  of  scientific  discovery  coupled 
with  alarm  lest  it  might  lead  us  astray,  attachment  to 
ancient  institutions,  larger  views  of  the  duty  of  the 
State  towards  its  people,  and  increasing  sympathy 
with  poverty  and  distress — all  these  feelings  and 
tendencies  find  their  expression  in  Tennyson's  poems, 
and  will  be  recognised  as  the  salient  features  of  the 
national  character.  In  the  direction  of  political  ideals 
his  imaginative  faculty  enabled  him  sometimes  not 


186  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

only  to  discern  the  movement,  but  also  to  lead  the 
way.  The  imperial  conception — realising  the  British 
empire's  unity  in  multiplicity,  regarding  it  as  a  deep- 
rooted  tree  which  sustains  and  nourishes  its  flourishing 
branches,  while  the  branches  in  return  give  support 
and  vitality  to  the  stem — was  proclaimed  in  his  verse 
before  it  had  attained  its  present  conspicuous  popu- 
larity. He  saw  that  the  edifice  had  been  quietly  set 
up  by  builders  who  made  no  noise  over  their  work ; 
and  he  called  upon  all  English-speaking  folk  to  join 
hands  and  consolidate  it.  The  revival  and  spread  of 
profound  veneration  for  the  Throne,  as  the  common 
centre  and  head  of  a  scattered  dominion,  is  another 
outcome  of  the  same  idea  that  owes  its  development 
to  the  last  thirty  years  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign ;  and 
some  share  in  promoting  it  may  fairly  be  attributed  to 
the  Laureate's  stately  verse.  In  all  these  respects, 
therefore,  it  will  be  right  for  the  future  historian  to 
treat  Tennyson  as  a  representative  of  the  Victorian 
period,  and  to  draw  inferences  from  his  work  as  to  the 
general  intellectual  and  political  tendencies  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Yet  a  single  writer  can  at  most 
only  present  particular  aspects  of  a  general  view, 
coloured  and  magnified  in  poetry  for  the  purposes  of 
his  art,  and  refracted  through  the  medium  of  his  own 
individuality,  which  is  always  strong  in  men  of  great 
genius,  who  are  apt  to  survey  their  world  from 
different  standpoints,  and  often  to  take  opposite  sides, 
as  in  the  instance  of  Byron  and  Scott.  It  could  there- 
fore be  of  little  advantage  to  enlarge  further  upon  this 
theory  in  a  biography. 

In  the  domain  of  pure  literature  it  is  less  difficult 
to  measure  Tennyson's  influence,  and  to  define  his 


vn.]  CONCLUSION  187 

position,  so  far  as  one  may  venture  upon  doing  so  within 
a  few  years  of  his  death.  One  can  perceive,  looking 
backward,  that  his  genius  flowered  in  due  season; 
there  had  been  a  plentiful  harvest  of  verse  in  the 
preceding  generation,  but  it  had  been  garnered,  and 
the  ground  was  clear.  About  this  time  English 
poetry  had  relapsed  into  one  of  those  intervals  of 
depression  that  precede  a  fresh  rise ;  the  popular  taste 
was  artificial  and  decadent,  running  down  to  the 
pseudo-romantic  and  conventional  forms,  to  a  false 
note  of  sentiment  and  to  affectation  in  style.  The  hour 
had  come  for  the  man  who  could  take  up  the  bequest 
of  that  brilliant  and  illustrious  group  who,  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century,  raised  English  poetry  to  a 
height  far  above  the  classic  elegance  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  beyond  the  domestic,  nature-loving, 
verse  of  Cowper  and  Crabbe.  A  new  impulse  was 
needed  to  lift  it,  and  to  break  in  upon  the  dulness 
that  seems  just  then  to  have  settled  down,  like  a 
passing  cloud,  upon  every  form  of  art.  This  flat  and 
open  space  gave  Tennyson  a  fair  start  upon  the 
course,  and  favoured  the  recognition  of  his  superiority; 
although  his  general  popularity  must  have  spread 
gradually,  since  we  have  seen  that  even  in  1850,  when 
the  choice  of  a  new  Laureate  had  to  be  made,  his  claim 
was  not  admitted  without  deliberation  in  high  political 
quarters.  Yet  all  genuine  judges  had  already  found 
in  Tennyson  the  poet  who  could  revive  again  the 
imaginative  power  of  verse,  who  possessed  the  spell 
that  endows  with  beauty  and  artistic  precision  the 
incidents  and  impressions  which  a  weaker  hand  can 
only  reproduce  in  vague  outline,  or  tamely ;  while 
the  master  is  both  luminous  and  accurate.  His  first 


188  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

•welcome  was  in  the  acclamation  of  his  contemporaries ; 
and  herein  lay  the  promise  of  his  poetry,  for  to  the 
departing  generation  the  coming  man  has  little  to 
say.  During  Tennyson's  youth  the  whole  com- 
plexion and  "moving  circumstance"  of  the  age  had 
undergone  a  great  alteration.  It  was  the  uproar 
and  martial  clang,  the  drums  and  trampling  of  the  long 
war  against  France,  the  mortal  strife  between  revolu- 
tionary and  reactionary  forces,  that  kindled  the  fiery 
indignation  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  and  affected 
Coleridge  and  even  Wordsworth,  "in  their  hot  youth, 
when  George  the  Third  was  king."  Tennyson's  oppor- 
tunity arrived  when  these  thunderous  echoes  had  died 
away,  when  the  Eeform  Bill  had  become  law,  and  when 
the  era  of  peace  in  Europe  and  comfortable  prosperity 
in  England,  that  marks  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  had  just  set  in.  This  change  in  the  temper 
of  the  times  is  reflected  in  his  poetry ;  the  wild  and 
stormy  element  has  disappeared;  his  impressions  of 
the  earth,  sea,  and  sky  are  mainly  peaceful,  melancholy, 
mysterious ;  he  is  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields, 
or  listening  in  fancy  to  the  ripple  of  the  brook,  or  the 
plash  of  a  quiet  sea. 

Length  of  life,  maturity  of  experience,  abundant 
leisure,  and  domestic  happiness  must  also  be  reckoned 
among  the  tranquillising  influences  that  have  imparted 
the  charms  of  equanimity,  self-restraint,  and  exquisite 
finish  to  the  best  of  Tennyson's  poetry. 

In  1890  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  who  was  Tenny- 
son's junior  by  only  twenty-three  days,  wrote  to  him : — 

"  I  am  proud  of  my  birth  year,  and  humbled  when  I  think 
of  who  were  and  who  are  my  coevals.  Darwin,  the  destroyer 
and  creator ;  Lord  Houghton,  the  pleasant  and  kind-hearted 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  189 

lover  of  men  of  letters  ;  Gladstone,  whom  I  leave  it  to  you 
to  characterise,  but  whose  vast  range  of  intellectual  powers 
few  will  question ;  Mendelssohn,  whose  music  still  rings  in 
our  ears;  and  the  Laureate,  whose  'jewels  five  words  long1 
—  many  of  them  a  good  deal  longer  —  sparkle  in  our 
memories."  1 

This  is  a  brilliant  constellation  of  talents  to  have  shot 
up  out  of  a  single  year  (1809);  and  the  lives  of  all 
these  men,  except  Mendelssohn,  were  long ;  they  had 
full  scope  for  their  various  capacities.  But  among 
Tennyson's  precursors  in  the  poetic  arena  three  leaders 
had  died  young  in  the  foremost  ranks,  Byron,  Shelley, 
and  Keats :  two  of  them  in  the  midst  of  feverish  activity, 
they  were  all  cut  off  suddenly  and  prematurely.  The 
sum-total  of  their  years  added  together  exceeds  by  no 
more  than  eleven  the  number  that  were  allotted  to 
Tennyson's  account.  And  if  the  productive  period  of 
a  poet's  life  may  be  taken  to  begin  at  twenty-one 
(which  is  full  early),  it  sums  up  to  about  thirty-one 
years  for  all  these  three  poets,  and  to  above  sixty 
years  for  Tennyson  alone.  By  the  time  that  Coleridge 
was  twenty-six  he  had  produced  (we  are  told  2)  all  the 
poetry  by  which  he  will  be  remembered,  and  critics 
have  declared  that  Wordsworth  did  all  his  good  work 
in  the  decade  between  1798  and  1808.  It  was  Tenny- 
son's good  fortune  not  only  to  reach  a  greater  age 
than  any  other  poet  of  his  century,  but  also  to  sustain 
the  excellence  of  his  verse  for  a  longer  period. 
Wordsworth,  indeed,  lived  and  wrote  up  to  old  age ; 
and  in  him,  as  in  Tennyson,  we  have  the  contemplative 
humour,  the  balance  of  mind  swaying  occasionally 

1  Memoir. 

2  Coleridge,  by  H.  D.  Traill  ("Men  of  Letters  "  series). 


190  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

between  cheerfulness  and  dejection,  that  is  natural 
to  men  who  are  passing  quietly  through  all  the 
stages  of  life.  Nor  should  we  forget  that  each  of  them 
was  most  fortunate  in  the  affection  of  his  family  and 
in  a  well-ordered  home;  while  Byron  and  Shelley 
were  incessantly  at  war  with  society,  and  Coleridge's 
matrimonial  venture  brought  him  nothing  but  vexa- 
tion and  embarrassment. 

Tennyson's  face  and  demeanour,  which  have  been 
preserved  in  the  fine  portraits  of  him  by  Watts  and 
Millais,  were  so  remarkable,  that  at  the  first  sight  one 
took  the  impression  of  unusual  dignity  and  intellectual 
distinction.  His  voice,  gesture,  and  bearing  imperson- 
ated, so  to  speak,  his  character  and  reputation;  his 
appearance  fulfilled  the  common  expectation  (so  often 
disappointed)  of  perceiving  at  once  something  singular 
and  striking  in  the  presence  of  a  celebrity.  Jowett 
wrote  of  him  after  his  death  that  he  was  a  magnificent 
man  who  stood  before  you  in  his  native  refinement 
and  strength,  and  that  the  unconventionality  of  his 
manners  was  in  keeping  with  the  originality  of  his 
figure.  He  enjoyed  his  well-earned  fame  and  the 
tokens  of  enthusiastic  admiration  that  came  to  him 
from  near  and  far;  he  listened  to  applause  with 
straightforward  complacency.  From  the  sensitiveness 
to  which  the  race  of  poets  is  proverbially  liable  he  was 
not  free ;  and  there  are  passages  in  his  poetry  which 
indicate  a  shrinking  anticipation  of  the  inquest  that  is 
now  held  over  a  notable  man  immediately  after  his 
death,  to  scrutinise  his  private  life,  and  to  satiate 
public  curiosity.  Under  the  title  of  The  Dead  Prophet 
he  published  (1885)  verses  that  express  this  feeling  by 
the  rather  ghastly  image  of  a  great  teacher  of  the 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  191 

people  "  whose  word  had  won  him  a  noble  name,"  left 
stripped  and  naked  after  his  death  before  a  staring 
crowd,  his  corpse  laid  bare  by  his  friends,  and  insulted 
by  those  whom  the  Prophet  had  offended.  This  poem 
was  written,  as  the  Memoir  tells  us,  because  Tennyson 
felt  strongly  that  the  world  likes  to  know  about  the 
"roughness,  eccentricities,  and  defects  of  a  man  of 
genius,  rather  than  what  he  really  is."  It  is  a  very 
natural  popular  craving  to  desire  minute  knowledge  of 
everything  that  completes  a  full-length  portrait  and 
re-creates  the  living  bodily  presence  of  a  famous  man 
who  has  passed  away;  nor  would  any  man  of  his 
eminence  in  our  time  be  more  likely  to  gain  than  to 
lose  by  such  a  scrutiny  than  Tennyson.  But  in  the 
Recollections  contributed  to  the  Memoir  by  some  dis- 
tinguished men  who  were  qualified  to  speak  of  him 
by  long  friendship  and  close  personal  intercourse,  we 
have  ample  descriptions  of  his  private  life,  his  way  of 
thought,  his  conversation,  and  the  various  sides  of  his 
character.  We  know  already  what  he  really  was ;  we 
are  aware  of  his  susceptibilities;  and  by  respecting 
them  with  the  deference  which  they  would  command 
if  Tennyson  were  still  alive,  we  shall  best  honour  the 
memory  of  an  illustrious  Englishman  and  a  true  and 
noble  poet. 


INDEX 


Ahriman,  176. 

"Akbar's  Dream,"  143, 176-177, 179. 

Albert,  Prince  Consort,  76. 

Aldworth,  129,  150,  179-180. 

Allen,  Dr.,  52. 

America,  169. 

Amesbury,  107. 

"  Anacaona,"  10. 

"Ancient  Sage.  The,"  143-144. 

"Apostles"  at  Cambridge,  7-8,  17. 

Argyll  Duke  of,  95-96,  127-128. 

Armageddon,  battle  of,  8. 

Arnold  Matthew,  31-32. 

Arthur,  97-93,  100,  102,  103,  104- 

107,  110-112. 
Arthurian  Legends,  45-46,  95,  96- 

97,  100-102. 
Athenaum,  10. 
"Audley  Court,  "47. 
"AuldKobin  Gray,  "118. 
Austen,  Jane,  151. 
Auvergne,  125,  126-127. 
"Avilion,"112. 
"  Aylmer's  Field,"  116-117. 

B 

Bacon,  7. 

Bagenhall  (Queen  Mary),  158. 

Balfour,  Mr.  Arthur,  14  note. 

"  Bandit's  Death,  The,"  175. 

"  Banks  and  braes  o'  bonnie  Doon," 

60-61. 

Barnes,  William,  121  note. 
Beaconsfield,  Lord,  149-150. 
N 


Becket.  162-164. 

Belgium,  54. 

Beljame,  Professor  A.,  116. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  55. 

Biographia   Literaria  (Coleridge), 

119. 

Blackdown,  129. 
Blacktoood's  Magazine,  15. 
Blakesley,  39. 

Blank  verse,  Tennyson's,  181-182. 
Boccaccio,  168. 
Bolton  Abbey,  33. 
Bonn,  28. 
Bonner,    Bishop    (Queen     Mary), 

158. 

Bowring,  John,  15. 
Boyle,  Mary,  6-7. 
Bradley,  Professor  A.  C. ,  72  note. 
Browning,  Robert,  13,  94,  178,  179, 

180-181,  182. 
Brownings,  The,  75,  85. 
Bryce,  Mr.,  163. 
Bunyan,  64. 

"Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,"  79. 
Burke,  28,  183. 
Burns,  33,  60-61, 120-121. 
Byron,  6,  27,  29,  30,  31,  34,  126 

154,  186,  188,  189,  190. 

C 

Calvinism,  136. 
Cambridge,  4-12,  13,  17,  149. 
"Camelot,"102. 
Cameron,  Mrs.,  151. 
Campbell,  79. 

193 


194 


TENNYSON 


Carlyle,  39-40,  53,  62-63,  152,  178. 
Catullus,  61-62. 
Caxton,  97,  101. 
Cenci  (Shelley),  154. 
Chanson  de  Roland,  112. 
Chapters   on   English    Metre,    by 

J.  B.  Mayor,  23  note.  182. 
"  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  79. 
Charlemagne,  98. 
Charles,  Mrs.  Bundle,  62. 
Chartists,  33. 
Chaucer,  61. 
Cheltenham,  52,  60. 
"  ChUdren's  Hospital,"  133. 
"  Christopher  North,"  15. 
Clark,  Sir  Andrew,  179-180. 
Clevedon,  75. 
Clough,  Arthur,  125. 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  32. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  13, 14-15, 

29,  32,  34,  119,  123-124,  142, 154, 

188,  189,  190. 
Cologne,  28. 
"Come  into  the  garden,    Maud," 

90. 
"Confessions  of  a  Sensitive  Mind," 

16. 

Cornwall,  54,  60,  125. 
Couchers  du  Soleil  (Victor  Hugo's), 

125. 

Coventry,  33. 
Cowper,  31,  79,  187. 
Crabbe,  113,  115,  120,  174,  187. 
Cranmer  (Queen  Mary),  157,  165. 
Crimean  War,  29,  79. 
Cromwell,  62. 

"Crossing  the  Bar,"  177,  180. 
"  Cup,  The,"  168-169. 

D 

"  Daisy,  The,"  75. 
Dante,  41,  109. 
Darwin,  Charles,  128, 188. 
"Day  Dream,  The,"  38. 
"Dead  Prophet,  The,"  190-191. 


"  Death  of  CEnone,"  175-176,  177. 
"Defence  of  Lucknow,"  79-80. 
"Demeter  and  Persephone,"  173- 

174, 

Derbyshire,  126. 

"  Despair,"  133,  135-136,  137, 146. 
Disraeli  (Lord  Beaconsfield),   149- 

150. 

Dixon,  Canon,  76. 
"  Dobson  "  (Promise  of  May),  167. 
"Dora,"  46-47, 116. 
"Doubt  and  Pride,"  184. 
"  Dream  of  Fair  Women,"  36-37. 
Dryden,  27. 
Dufferin  and  Ava,  Marquis  of,  152. 


East  Anglia,  113. 

Ecdesiastes,  92. 

"Edgar"  (Promise  of  May),  166- 

167. 

Edith  (Harold),  161,  162. 
Edward    the    Confessor    (Harold), 

160. 

Edwin  Morris,  47. 
"  Elaine,"  104. 

Eleanor,  Queen  (Becket),  163,  164. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  98,  156,  158,  159. 
Emma,    Queen    of    the    Sandwich 

Islands,  128. 

"  Enoch  Arden,"  113-116. 
"Euphranor"  (E.  FitzGer aid's),  60- 

61. 

Eva  (Promise  of  May),  167. 
Evolution,  128, 140, 144. 
"Excalibur,"  111-112. 
Eyre,  Governor,  128-129. 

F 

Fairy  Queen,  97, 102. 
"Faith,  "184. 
Falcon,  The,  168. 
Farringford,  83,  95,  125,  127, 150, 

151,  179. 
"  First  Quarrel,  The,"  133. 


INDEX 


195 


FitzGerald,  E.,  33,  36,  38,  39,  47, 

52,  54,  60-61,  62,  63,  72,  73,  121- 

122,  147,  152-153,  178. 
Foresters,  The,  169-170. 
"Forlorn,"  175. 
Foundations  of  Belief  (A.  J.  Bal- 

four's),  14,  note. 
France,  28,  34,  94,   126-127,   128, 

154,  188. 

Franchise  Bill,  171. 
French  Historic  Drama,  154-155. 
Fryston,  75. 

G 

"Gardener's  Daughter,  The,"  46. 

Gardiner,  Bishop  (Queen  Mary), 
157, 158. 

"Gareth  and  Lynette,"  153. 

Garibaldi,  127-128. 

George  Eliot,  150. 

Oil  Bias,  115. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  9,  91,  92,  149, 
150,  171, 189. 

Glastonbury,  75, 112. 

Gleanings  of  Past  Years  (Glad- 
stone's), 91,  92. 

Globe  Theatre,  167-168. 

"Godiva,"33. 

Goethe,  40,  128. 

Goldsmith,  154. 

Gordon,  General,  150. 

"Grandmother,  "63,  118,  120. 

Gray's  Elegy,  180. 

Green,  J.  E.,  162. 

"Guinevere,"  96, 103, 104-107, 112, 
150. 

H 

Hales,  Professor,  3-4. 

Hallam,  Arthur,  9,  15,  17,  29-30, 

63,  75. 

Hallam,  Henry,  39,  52,  178. 
Hamlet,  51,  74,  90. 
Hare,  Julius,  39. 
Harold,  160-162. 


Henry  II.  (Becket),  162,  163-164. 
Henry  VIII.  (Shakespeare),  152. 
High  Beech,  Epping  Forest,  33. 
"Higher  Pantheism,"  132. 
History    of    English    Literature 

(Taine's),  1. 
Holderness,  3. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  188-189. 
"Holy  Grail,"  102-103,  121,  150. 
"Home  they  brought  her  warrior 

dead,"  57. 
Homer,  17,  59,  103. 
Hough  ton,  Lord  (Monckton  Milnes), 

26-27,  33,  53,  75,  83-84,  86,  188- 

189. 

House  of  Lords,  171. 
Howard,  Lord  (Queen  Mary),  158. 
Ho witt,  Mr.,  3. 

Hugo,  Victor,  125,  154,  157, 184. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  76. 
Huxley,  Professor,  68, 150. 
Hyperion  (Keats),  44. 


"Idiot  Boy"  (Wordsworth),  124. 
Idylls  of  the  King,  95-113, 125,  153. 
Iliad,  62,  112-113. 
' '  Immeasurable  Sadness, "  Epigram, 

133. 
In  Afemoriam,  30,  50,   63-74,   76, 

84,  138,  142. 
Ireland,  52,  61. 
Irving,  Sir  Henry,  164,  168. 
"Isabel,  "17. 
"Iseult,"  108-109. 
Isle  of  Wight,  54.     See  Farringford. 
Italy,  54,  75, 128. 


Jonson,  Ben,  72. 

Joubert,  184. 

Jowett,  Benjamin,  85-86,  93  note 

95,  149,  179,  190. 
"Juvenilia,"  16. 


196 


TENNYSON 


Keats,  23,  28,  38,  43-44, 136,  189. 

Kehama  (Southey's),  94. 

Kemble,  Fanny,  168. 

Kenilworth,  33. 

Khartoum,  150. 

Killarney,  61. 

Kinglake,  26. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  57,  60. 

Kipling,  Kudyard,  179. 

Knowles,  James,  131. 

Knowles,  Sheridan,  53,  76. 


La  Fontaine,  168. 

"Lady  of  Shalott,"  18,   27,   104, 

122. 

Lake  Country,  32,  33. 
Last  Tournament,  108-109. 
"Launcelot,"  103,  104-105,  112. 
"Launcelot  and  Elaine,"  104-105. 
"Launcelot  and  Guinevere,"  51. 
"Leper's  Bride,"  175. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  150. 
Liberalism,  5,  6,  28,  34. 
Lind,  Jenny,  150. 
Lisbon,  95. 
Liverpool,  Lord,  34. 
Locker,  Frederick,  129-130. 
Locker,  Miss,  152. 
Locksley  Hall,  48-50,  53,  116,  133. 
"  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After," 

137-140,  172-173. 
London,  171, 178. 
London  Review,  27. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  150. 
Longfellows,  The,  128. 
"LordofBurleigh,"117. 
"Lotos  Eaters, "25-26. 
Louth,  3. 

"  Love  thou  the  Land,"  34. 
"Lover's  Tale,  "17-18. 
Lowell,  J.K.,84. 
Luchon,  125. 
Lucretius,  68. 


"  Lucretius"  (Tennyson's),  43. 
Lushington,  Edmund,  63-64. 
Lushingtons,  The,  39. 
Lyall,  Sir  Charles,  50  note. 
Lyceum  Theatre,  164. 
Lyrical  Ballads,  preface,  119,  123, 
124. 

M 

Mablethorpe,  28,  44-45. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  96. 

"Madeline,  "17. 

"  Maid  of  Astolat "  (Launcelot  and 
Elaine),  95,  104. 

"  Maid  Marian  "  (Thomas  Love 
Peacock),  170. 

Malaga,  17- 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  97, 101,  108. 

"Margaret's  Bridal  Eve"  (George 
Meredith's),  175. 

"Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange," 
19-20. 

"Mariana  in  the  South,"  18. 

"Mark"  (The  Last  Tournament), 
108,  109. 

Martineau,  Harriet,  53. 

Marvell,  Andrew,  148. 

Mary  Boyle,  verses  to,  6-7. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots  (Queen  Mary), 
155-157. 

Mary  of  Tudor  (Queen  Mary),  155- 
157. 

Maud,  50,  73,  76,  83-94,  116,  133. 

Maurice,  Frederick,  10. 

"May  Queen,  The,"  118-120 

Mayor,  J.  B.,  23  note,  182. 

Memoirs  of  Lord  Tennyson,  by  Lord 
Hallam,  Tennyson,  2-3,  4,  5,  10- 
12,  28,  31,  32,  35,  36,  37,  38,  39- 
40,  53,  57,  58,  59,  60,  61,  63, 
65-66,  72,  76-77,  83,  86,  90,  96, 
99-100,  101,  126-128,  130-131, 
150, 153,  160,  162,  163,  166,  168, 
178,  179,  189,  190. 

Meredith,  George,  175. 


INDEX 


197 


Merivale,  Dean,  10. 

"  Merlin  and  the  Gleam,"  185. 

Metaphysical    Society,   The,    131, 

132. 

Mill,  J.  S.,27. 
Mill,  James,  55. 
Millais,  Sir  J.  E.,190. 
Milton,  27,  40,  44,  91,  181. 
Mistral,  121  note. 
Moallakat  (Arabian  Poems),  49-50. 
"Modred,"  103,  110-111. 
Monckton  -  Milnes.         See      Lord 

Houghton. 

Montgomery,  James,  27-28. 
Morris,  William,  Life,  of,  76. 
Morte  d' Arthur  (Malory's),  97, 108, 

112. 
"Morte   d'Arthur"    (Tennyson's), 

24,  45-46, 110. 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  168. 

N 

Napoleon,  128. 
New  England,  121. 
New  York,  169. 

Newman,  John  Henry,  67,  150. 
Nineteenth  Century,  131. 
Noailles  (Queen  Mary),  157. 
Noel,  Roden,  123. 
"  Northern  Cobbler,"  122. 
"Northern      Farmer,"      121-123, 
181. 

0 

"  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,"  77-78. 

Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality (Wordsworth),  185. 

Odyssey,  40-41,  48,  62,  115. 

"(Enone,"23,  24,  176. 

Omar  Khayyam,  178. 

Onomatopoeia,  92-93. 

Ormuzd,  176. 

"OwdEoa,"174. 

Owen,  Professor,  128. 


Oxford,  9,  76. 

Oxford  Movement,  33,  66. 


Paget,  Lord  (Queen   Mary],    157, 

158. 
"Palace  of  Art,"  18,20-22,  37,  45, 

92. 

Palgrave,  F.,  130-131. 
Pantheism,  35,  132. 
Paradise  Lost,  40. 
"Paris"  (Death  of  O3none),  175- 

176. 

"Passing  of  Arthur,"  110-112. 
Past  and  Present  (Carlyle's),  40. 
Pastorals,  Tennyson's,  118-124, 133. 
Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  170. 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  52-53. 
"Philip  van  Artevelde"  (Sir    H. 

Taylor),  30. 

Philip  of  Spain  (Queen  Mary),  165. 
Phillips,  Stephen,  165. 
Plato,  Jowett's,  149. 
Plays,  Tennyson's,  154-170. 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  4. 
Poems  chiefly  Lyrical,  13-17. 
Pole,  Cardinal  (Queen  Mary),  157, 

158. 

Pope,  27,  51.    , 
Princess,  The,  55-60,  61. 
Pritchard,  Rev.  Charles,  131. 
Promise  of  May,  166-168. 
Pyrenees,  17, 125. 

Q 

Quarterly  Review,  15,  26-27,  91. 
Queen   Mary,    154-160,   161,    162, 

163. 

R 
"Recollections    of    the     Arabian 

Nights,  "16. 

Remorse  (Coleridge's),  154. 
Renard,  Simon  (Queen  Mary),  157. 
"Revenge,  The,"  63,  80. 
Rhine,  28,  54. 


198 


TENNYSON 


Richard  in.  (Shakespeare's),  163. 
Richter,  Jean  Paul,  40. 
"Ring,  The,"  175. 
Rizpah,  133,  134-135. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  77. 
Roland,  98,  112. 
"Romney's  Remorse,"  175. 
"  Rosamond"  (Becket),  163-164. 
Rousseau,  49,  55. 
Ruskin,  John,  85,  99-100. 
Russell,  Lord  John,  76. 
Rydal  Mount,  32. 

S 

St.  James's  Theatre,  168. 
"St.  Simeon  Stylites,"  47,  51. 
St.  Simonists,  28. 
Schiller,  157. 
Scilly  Islands,  125. 
Scotland,  60,  121. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  13,  31,  82,   99, 

186. 

Selborne,  Lord,  179. 
Sellwood,     Emily.        See     Lady 

Tennyson. 
Sellwood,  Louisa.    See  Mrs.  Charles 

Tennyson. 

Senlac  (Harold),  160,  162. 
Shakespeare,    7,    33,    62,    73-74, 

86,  90,  122,  130,  151,  154,  158, 

162,  180 ;  Shakespeare's  Sonnets, 

73-74 ;     Shakespeare's     English 

Chronicle  Plays,  154. 
"Shallow"  (Shakespeare),  122. 
Shelley,  6,  29,  30,  31,  32,  34,   64, 

154,  188,  189, 190. 
Shiplake  Church,  75. 
Sidgwick,  Henry,  55-56. 
"Silent  Voices,  The,"  180,  184. 
"SirAylmer,"116,  117. 
"SirEctor"  (Mart  tf  Arthur),  112. 
"Sir  Galahad,  "51. 
Somersby,  3,  17,  28,  31,  33. 
"  Song  of  the  Three  Sisters,"  10-11. 
Southey,  15,  29,  77-78,  94. 


Spain,  17,  95. 
Spanish  Refugees,  17. 
Spedding,  James,  39. 
Speddings,  The,  32. 
Spenser,  97,  98,  102. 
"Spinster's  Sweet  'Arts,"  123. 
Stamford  Bridge  (Harold),  160. 
Stephen,  Sir  James  Fitzjames,  Life 

of,  7-8. 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  7-8, 131. 
Sterling,  John,  10. 
Stratford-on-Avon,  33. 
Sublime   and   Beautiful   (Burke's 

Treatise),  183. 
"  Summer  Oak,"  40. 
Sumner,  Charles,  33. 
Swinburne,  165,  181. 
Switzerland,  54-55. 
Synorix  (The  Cup),  168. 


Table  Talk  (Coleridge),  15. 

Taine,  M.,  1,182. 

"  Talking  Oak,  The,"  47-48,  94. 

Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  30-31,  76,  77, 
85. 

"Tears,  Idle  Tears, "57,  63. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord.  Birth  at 
Somersby,  3  ;  school  at  Louth,  3- 
4 ;  taught  by  his  father,  4 ; 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  4 ; 
entered  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, 4  ;  life  at  the  University, 
4-12  ;  prize  poem,  Timbuctoo,  8  ; 
poems  written  at  Cambridge,  10- 
12 ;  Poems  chiefly  Lyrical,  13 ; 
its  reception  by  the  critics,  14-15  ; 
journey  to  the  Pyrenees,  17 ; 
return  to  Somersby,  17 ;  pub- 
lication of  second  volume  of 
poems,  17;  visit  to  the  Continent, 
28  ;  death  of  Arthur  Hallam,  29- 
30 ;  Tennyson's  correspondence, 
31-32 ;  visit  to  the  Lake  Country, 
32 ;  removal  from  Somersby  to 


INDEX 


199 


High  Beech,  Eppiug  Forest,  33  ; 
to  Tunbridge  Wells,  33  ;  publica- 
tion of  two  volumes  of  Poetry, 
38 ;  travels  in  England  and  Ire- 
land, 52 ;  received  pension  of 
£200,  53 ;  visit  to  Belgium  and 
Switzerland,  54-55  ;  The  Princess, 
55  ;  lived  at  Cheltenham,  60  ;  In 
Memoriam,  64  ;  marriage  at  Ship- 
lake,  75  ;  took  house  at  Warning- 
lid,  Sussex,  75;  removed  to 
Chapel  House,  Twickenham,  75  ; 
first  child  born  and  died,  75 ; 
visit  to  Italy,  75  ;  Laureateship 
offered  and  accepted,  76-77,  187  ; 
birth  of  son  afterwards  Lord 
Hallam  Tennyson,  83 ;  purchased 
Farringford,  83;  Maud,  84; 
Idylls  of  the  King,  95  ;  short 
visit  to  Spain,  95 ;  Enoch  Arden, 
113 ;  excursion  to  Cornwall  and 
Scilly  Islands,  125 ;  visit  to  the 
Continent,  125 ;  tour  to  Water- 
loo, 128 ;  built  Aldworth  in 
Surrey,  129 ;  made  Honorary 
Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, 149  ;  offered  and  declined 
baronetcy,  149-150;  Queen  Mary, 
154  ;  Harold,  160 ;  Becket,  162  ; 
accepted  peerage,  171 ;  publica- 
tion of  last  volume  of  poems,  177  ; 
death,  180 ;  personal  character- 
istics, 130,  190  ;  religious  and 
philosophical  views,  7, 12,  28,  34- 
35,  64-72,  129-149,  178, 183,  185  ; 
political  views,  5-7,  28-29,  33-34, 
171,  185-186;  views  on  poetry, 
31 ;  Tennyson's  pictorial  power 
and  method,  9,  17,  18-19,  20-21, 
44-45,  118-119,  124 ;  his  care  in 
revision,  19-20,  24,  35-38;  his 
treatment  of  nature,  21,  44,  64-65, 
68,  109-110,  118-119,  124,  182- 
183 ;  his  treatment  of  Greek 
Myths,  23-26,  44  ;  Tennyson  as  a 


dramatist,  154-170 ;  his  metre, 
23,  43-44,  49,  72,  93-94,  181-182  ; 
simplicity  of  diction,  119-121 ; 
his  management  of  dialect,  120- 
121,  122;  Tennyson  and  his 
times,  2,  182,  185-190 ;  his  treat- 
ment by  the  critics,  14-16,  26-28, 
39 ;  his  influence  in  literature, 
186-190. 

Tennyson,  Dr.  George  Clayton 
(Tennyson's  father),  3,  4,  28. 

Tennyson,  Elizabeth  (his  mother), 
3. 

Tennyson,  Charles  (brother),  4,  74. 

Tennyson,  Emily  (sister),  29-30. 

Tennyson,  Cecilia  (sister),  64. 

Tennyson,  Emily,  Lady,  35,  74-75, 
150, 155;  Lady  Tennyson's  Diary, 
150-152, 155. 

Tennyson,  Hallam,  Lord  (son),  2, 
83.  See  Memoirs  of  Lord  Tenny- 
son, by  Lord  Hallam  Tennyson. 

Tennyson,  Lionel  (son),  152. 

Tennyson,  Mrs.  Charles,  74. 

Tennyson,  F.,  52. 

Tennysoniana,  72-73. 

Thackeray,  61-62,  95. 

Thalaba  (Southey),  94. 

"The  Splendour  falls  on  Castle 
Walls,  "57. 

"  The  Tribute,"  84-85. 

Theodore,  King  of  Abyssinia,  128. 

Timbuctoo,  prize  poem,  8-10. 

"  Tiresias,"  145-147,  174. 

Titania,  169-170. 

"Tithonus,"23,  42-43. 

Torrigo,  17. 

Tourgueneff,  150. 

Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  4, 149. 

"  Tristram  and  Iseult,  108-.110. 

Tunbridge  Wells,  33. 

Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  59. 

Twickenham,  75,  83. 

"  Two  Voices,"  30,  50-51. 

Tyndall,  Professor,  86. 


200 


TENNYSON 


"  Ulysses,"  23,  24,  40-42,  47,  53,  95. 
"  Underwood  "  (Ben  Jonson),  72. 


"  Vastness,"  140,  141,  146,  174. 
Vere,  Aubrey  de,  32-33,  39. 
Victoria,    Queen,   76-77,    98,   171, 

177,  186. 
Vienna,  30,  63. 
"Village  Life,  "122. 
"Vision  of  Sin,  "40. 

W 

Wales,  North,  33. 
"Walking  to  the  Mail,"  47. 
Warninglid,  Sussex,  75. 
Waterloo,  128. 
Watson,  William,  179. 
Watts,  G.,  190. 


Weimar,  128. 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  77. 

Westminster  Abbey,  180. 

Westminster  Review,  15. 

White,  Sir  Thomas  (Queen  Mary), 

157. 
William  the  Conqueror  (Harold), 

160,  162. 

William  the  Silent,  155. 
Wilson,  Professor,  15. 
Woodbridge,  152. 
Wordsworth,  Charles,  9. 
Wordsworth,  William,  13,  15,  18- 

19,  29,  32-33,  39,  46-47,  67-68, 71, 

76,  77,  78,  119-120,  123-124,  185, 

188,  189. 

"  Wreck,  The,"  133. 
Wulfnoth  (Harold),  160-161. 
Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas  (Queen  Mary) 

157, 158,  159-160. 


Edinburgh :  Printed  by  T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE 


English  flfcen  of  betters. 


NEW   SERIES. 


Crown  8vo.     Gilt  tops. 

GEORGE      ELIOT.       By     Sir 

LESLIE  STEPHEN,  K.C.B. 
HAZLITT.         By     AUGUSTINE 

BlRRELL,  K.C. 

MATTHEW    ARNOLD.      By 

HERBERT  PAUL. 

RUSKIN.  By  FREDERIC  HAR- 
RISON. 

TENNYSON.  By  Sir  ALFRED 
LYALL. 

RICHARDSON.       By    AUSTIN 

DOBSON. 


Flat  backs.     2s.  net  each. 

BROWNING.  By G.K. CHESTER- 
TON. 

CRABBE.     By  Canon  AINGER. 

JANE  AUSTEN.  By  the  Rev. 
H.  C.  BEECHING. 

HOBBES.  By  Sir  LESLIE 
STEPHEN,  K.C.B. 

SYDNEY  SMITH.  By  AUGUS- 
TINE BlRRELL,  K.C. 

ADAM  SMITH.  By  FRANCIS 
W.  HIRST. 


RE-ISSUE  OF  THE  VOLUMES  IN  THE  SERIES 
PREVIOUSLY  PUBLISHED. 

Library  Edition.     Uniform  with  the  above.     2s.  net  each. 


ADDISON.  By W.J.  COURTHOPE. 
BACON.     By  Dean  CHURCH. 
BENTLEY.      By  Sir   RICHARD 

JEBB. 

BUNYAN.     ByJ.  A.  FROUDE. 
BURKE.     By  JOHN  MORLEY. 
BURNS.     By  Principal  SHAIRP. 
BYRON.     By  Professor  NICHOL. 
CARLYLE.  By  Professor  NICHOL. 
CHAUCER.  By  Dr.  A.  W.  WARD. 
COLERIDGE.  By  H.D.TRAILL. 
COWPER.  By  GOLDWIN  SMITH. 
DEFOE.     By  W.  MINTO. 
DEQUINCEY.  ByProf.MASSON. 
DICKENS.         By    Dr.    A.    W. 

WARD. 

DRYDEN.    ByProf.  SAINTSBURY. 
FIELDING.  By  AUSTIN  DOBSON. 
GIBBON.     ByJ.  C.  MORISON. 
GOLDSMITH.     By  W.  BLACK. 
GRAY.     By  EDMUND  GOSSE. 
HAWTHORNE.       By    HENRY 

JAMES. 
HUME.    By  Prof.  HUXLEY,  F.R.S. 


JOHNSON.       By    Sir     LESLIE 

STEPHEN,  K.C.B. 
KEATS.    By  SIDNEY  COLVIN. 

LAMB,  CHARLES.     By  Canon 

AINGER. 

LANDOR.    By  SIDNEY  COLVIN. 
LOCKE.     By  THOMAS  FOWLER. 
MACAULAY.  ByJ.  C.  MORISON. 
MILTON.    By  MARK  PATTISON. 
POPE.     By  Sir  LESLIE  STEPHEN, 

K.C.B. 

SCOTT.     By  R.  H.  HUTTON. 
SHELLEY.    By  J.  A.  SYMONDS. 
SHERIDAN.  ByMrs.OLiPHANT. 
SIDNEY.     ByJ.  A.  SYMONDS. 
SOUTH EY.    By  Prof.  DOWDEN. 
SPENSER.     By  Dean  CHURCH. 
STERNE.     By  H.  D.  TRAILL. 
SWIFT.  By  Sir  LESLIE  STEPHEN, 

K.C.B. 
THACKERAY.      By  ANTHONY 

TROLLOPE. 
WORDSWORTH.      By  F.  W. 

H.  MYERS. 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LTD.,  LONDON. 


flfcen  of  action  Series 


Crown  8vo.     Cloth.     With  Portraits,     as.  6d.  each. 


CAMPBELL  (COLIN). 

By  ARCHIBALD  FORBES. 

CLIVE. 

By  Sir  CHARLES  WILSON. 

COOK  (Captain). 

By  Sir  WALTER  BESANT. 

DAM  PIER. 

By  W.  CLARK  RUSSELL. 

DRAKE. 

By  JULIAN  CORBETT. 

DUNDONALD. 

By  the  Hon.  J.  W.  FORTESCUE. 

GORDON  (General). 

By  Sir  W.  BUTLER. 

HASTINGS  (Warren;. 

By  Sir  A.  LYALL. 

HAVELOCK  (Sir  Henry). 

By  A.  FORBES. 

HENRY  V. 

By  the  Rev.  A.  J.  CHURCH. 

LAWRENCE  (Lord). 

By  Sir  RICHARD  TEMPLE. 


LIVINGSTONE. 

By  THOMAS  HUGHES. 

MONK. 

By  JULIAN  CORBETT. 

MONTROSE. 

By  MOWBRAY  MORRIS. 

NAPIER  (Sir  Charles). 

By  Colonel  Sir  W.  BUTLER. 

NELSON. 

By  Prof.  J.  K.  LAUGHTON. 

PETERBOROUGH. 

By  W.  STEBBING. 

RODNEY. 

By  DAVID  HANNAY. 

STRAFFORD. 

By  H.  D.  TRAILL. 

WARWICK,  the  King-Maker 

ByC.  W.  OMAN. 

WELLINGTON. 
By  GEORGE  HOOPER. 

WOLFE. 

By  A.  G.  BRADLEY. 


Gweive 


Statesmen. 


Crown  8vo.     2s.  6d.  each. 

*£*  A  Series  of  Short  Biographies,  not  designed  to  be  a  complete  roll  of 
famous  Statesmen,  but  to  present  in  historic  order  the  lives  and  work  of  those 
leading  actors  in  our  affairs  who  by  their  direct  influence  have  left  an  abiding 
mark  on  the  policy,  the  institutions,  and  the  position  of  Great  Britain 
among  States. 


WILLIAM  THE  CON- 
QUEROR. By  EDWARD  A.  FREE- 
MAN, D.C.L.,  LL.D.,  late  Regius 
Professor  of  Modern  History  in  the 
University  of  Oxford. 

HENRY  II. 

By  Mrs.  J.  R.  GREEN. 

EDWARD  I. 

By  T.  F.  TOUT,  M.A.,  Professor  of 
History,  The  Owens  College,  Man- 
chester. 

HENRY  VII. 

By  JAMES  GAIRDNER. 

CARDINAL  WOLSEY. 

By  Bishop  CREIGHTON,  D.D.,  late 
Dixie  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 


ELIZABETH. 

By  E.  S.  BEESLY,  M.A.,  Professor 
of  Modern  History,  University  College, 
London. 

OLIVER  CROMWELL. 

By  FREDERIC  HARRISON. 

WILLIAM  III. 

By  H.  D.  TRAILL. 

WALPOLE. 

By  JOHN  MORLEY. 

CHATHAM. 

By  JOHN  MORLEY.  [In preparation 

PITT. 

By  Lord  ROSEBERY. 

PEEL. 

By  J.  R.  THURSFIELD,  M.A.,  late 
Fellow  of  Jesus  College,  Oxford 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LTD.,  LONDON. 


CL.  2O.9.02. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  678  420     1 


